Project members can often be found in the#wikisource IRC channelwebclient. For discussion related to the entire project (not just the English chapter), please discuss at themultilingual Wikisource. There are currently 605active users here.
Latest comment:22 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
TheOpen Knowledge Initiatives (OKI) at International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad is a strategic initiative with the aim to foster language diversity and promote equitable access to knowledge across the Indian subcontinent. Through community-led and multilingual efforts across Wikimedia projects like Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wikisource, Wikidata in research, partnerships, technology development, and outreach, the initiative seeks to strengthen and expand the open knowledge and technology ecosystem. Under theWikimedia Education Program - National Education Policy Pilot Project, OKI aims to develop a strategic framework for integrating open knowledge ecosystems into the Indian education landscape, directly responding to the mandates of theNational Education Policy (NEP) 2020 and integrating the findings of the2024 CIS-A2K study. OKI is facilitating and mentoring the community collaborations with different educational institutions to design the scalable process modules. In collaboration with Fergusson College, Pune and Wikimedians, we have startedWikisource:Wikimedia Education Program - National Education Policy Pilot Project at Fergusson College, Pune. We kindly request for the community support in this endeavor. Regards,Subodh (OKI) (talk)12:50, 28 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:18 days ago5 comments3 people in discussion
In some wikisources, basic data about a work in Index namespace comes from Wikidata, comparehere. This new trend is implemented by inserting the option inMediaWiki:Proofreadpage index template andMediaWiki:Proofreadpage index data config.json. This makes the data centralised, and also readable by search engines that rely on Wikidata. I am proposing the addition here. This will be open to choice of individual editors, so that editors may fill up the Index page data as per current style or opt for importing from Wikidata.Hrishikes (talk)13:58, 30 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
Comment Since a lot of editors here are linking scans and Index pages into data items for the work instead of the data item for the edition, I foresee a lot of mismatched information using this approach. On smaller Wikisources, this is less of an issue, but for a large project like en.WS, there will be a lot more potential for mismatched information. At the very least, we would need to agree on what values to use in certain locations: For example, Wikidata tracks editions and not always separate print runs, but here we will often make a distinction between impressions of the same edition issued in different years. --EncycloPetey (talk)20:18, 30 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
The edition versus print issue is a problem, but that has been sorted out by treating prints as editions. The item linked in my proposal is a reprint treated as edition in Wikidata. Every index requires a separate Wikidata item for this scheme to work, be it edition or print. Currently, index page data can be fetched from the Commons file; those who wish can do so. This Wikidata scheme will just create another option, to fetch data from Wikidata, like what is done in Author pages.Hrishikes (talk)04:29, 31 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
I wonder if this change might actually make iteasier to automatically track and fix Wikidata items that aren't modelling works properly? Certainly, I think if we were to proceed with this, it would be wise to start small and iron out any issues before making it a regular practice. —Beleg Tâl (talk)22:03, 31 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
@Beleg Tâl: — Yes, of course. But I believe adding just an extra option is starting small. Big things are not now proposed. This option will motivate proper Wikidata entries at edition level (as opposed to work). Later, it will be possible to make appropriate queries using Wikidata tools to find various patterns and statistics. It will be possible to make entries in Author pages using a bot, instead of manually (the system exists elsewhere; in this set-up no vandalism is possible because the bot will correct those during next update). With proper Wikidata entries, works can be made available in the Wikisource android app (made available in PlayStore) for ease of readers. A work recently completed by me,Some Notes on Indian Artistic Anatomy, is available in the app. But I fully agree that we should start small.Hrishikes (talk)16:57, 1 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
For some reason, the set of pages in the uploaded file here (on Wikisource / Wikimedia Commons) does not match the set of pages shown at the Internet Archive.
In the page scans, the OCR-ed text is off by one page from the corresponding page.
Latest comment:5 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Something happened (I think a while ago) that broke many of the tooltips I have set up for abbreviations that contain superscripts and are throwing up errors, as can be seen in the link above. The problem will be somewhere inTemplate:Nornabr,Module:Nornabr orModule:Nornabr/data. Would anybody with more template knowledge be able to fix this?— 🐗 Griceylipper (✉️)19:25, 1 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:22 days ago4 comments2 people in discussion
Hi, I want to transcribe a film in my home wikisource, and I'm usingBlackmail (film) as an example. I couldn't find where the data of Cast and Crew section came from. I tried to copy to Sandbox[1], but it doesn't appear to have the Cast and Crew section. Anybody could shed a light on this? Thanks.Bennylin (talk)06:05, 24 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
@Bennylin: Hi, and thanks for taking interest in our film projects here. I looked and saw you're working on at the Indonesian Wikisource. The Cast and Crew section is generated by the template {{Cast and crew}} which is internal to {{Film}}. And the logic is in several Lua modules:Module:Cast and crew andModule:Film. Here's an example invocation:{{cast and crew|Q816038}} This can produce some code by itself. Hopefully that helps. If you need more help with it, I can try to take some time out this week or so to work on stuff over at idws with you.SnowyCinema (talk)06:36, 24 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:24 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Latesttech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.Translations are available.
All users with registered accounts can now use passkeys fortwo-factor authentication (2FA). Passkeys are a simple way to log in without using a second device. They verify the user's identity using a fingerprint, face scan, or a PIN code. To set up a passkey, first set up a regular 2FA method. Currently, to log in with a passkey, users must also use a password. Later this quarter, passwordless login will allow users to log in with a single click and a passkey. Users with advanced rights will also be required to have 2FA enabled. This is part of theAccount Security project.
Unregistered contributors on blocked IPs or blocked IP ranges can now interact on-wiki to appeal a block by creating a temporary account to appeal a block on the user talk page, unless the "prevent this user from editing their own talk page" is enabled. This solves the problem of logged-out users unable to use the default unblock process via user talk page.[2]
View all 20 community-submitted tasks that wereresolved last week. For example, the Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) methods description on the management page has been updated. It is now clearer and easier for users to understand and make use of.[3]
Updates for technical contributors
A new AbuseFilter variable,account_type, has been added to provide a reliable way to determine the account type being created in thecreateaccount andautocreateaccount actions. As part of this change, the variableaccountname has been renamed toaccount_name, andaccountname is now deprecated. Edit filter managers should update any filters that use hardcoded account type checks or the deprecated variable.[4]
Image thumbnails that are requested in non-standard sizes, and using non-standard methods such as direct requests toupload.wikimedia.org/… will stop working in the near future. This change is to prevent ongoing external abuse by web-scrapers and bots. Some users with custom CSS/JS, Interface Admins who can fix gadgets and local skins, and Tool-authors, will need to update their code to use standard thumbnail sizes.Details, search-links, and examples of how to fix them, are available in the task.
Latest comment:21 days ago5 comments4 people in discussion
Last night I noticed odd behavior while editing in the Page namespace. The behavior is still occurring today. When I double-click a word, I now get the front half of a word selected instead of the entire word. It selects the word only up to the point where my cursor is positioned, instead of the entire word.
This behavior does not occur outside of the Proofreading in Page space, nor in other applications where I've tested for it. Although it does not occur 100% of the time, it is occurring frequently enough that I noticed it causing errors in proofreading, as I expect normal double-click behavior to select all of word, so that I can replace it, rather then retaining the end of the existing word.
I believe that double-click-to-select is a browser-based function; have you experienced this in other browsers? I can confirm that I do NOT have this issue, and I am using Chrome on Windows. —Beleg Tâl (talk)20:35, 28 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
If it is a browser-based function, then I would expect the same behavior in my browser regardless of the site / page. I considered this possibility and checked other sites, both in and out of Wikimedia. I am only experiencing the issue when editing in the Page namespace. --EncycloPetey (talk)22:07, 28 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
That doesn’t change anything. I’ve had a long-running issue which only occurs in Page: and appears to an issue specific to me (not your issue, though); in other Web-sites, including other Wikimedia sites, there is no problem. For the record, I also don’t have your issue (I checked Chrome and Edge).TE(æ)A,ea. (talk)00:43, 29 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
Issues with editing window height in ProofreadPage
Has anyone encountered that recently? I've been having issues with the editing layout being compressed to a very small height, making it kind of unusable. I can reproduce on another account, so I'm a bit surprised it'd affect only me. (For details, see my report atphab:T393231#11570707.) —Alien 3 3 321:22, 30 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
Yes for past two days, I've been experiencing the second version you reported "the edit boxes overflowing onto the form buttons". No scroll bars on the edit window any more—instead the edit window expands to take in the entirety of the content, and the "form buttons" (Proofread status buttons, Publish buttons etc.) are floating in the middle of the edit box.
Edit: I've checked which feature was causing this extreme version of the problem in my case. It went away when I turned off "Improved Syntax Highlighting" in Beta Features.Pasicles (talk)21:43, 30 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
My edit window suddenly reduced in height about the same time. I corrected the problem by dragging the edge of the editing window down, and it has stayed at the new height. I'm guessing that some sort of data was accidentally overwritten, or some change altered the default. The [OCR] button no longer appears at the top of my edit window; I have only the new drop-down OCR menu instead. And there in now an intrusive "Insert" drop-down menu at the top that was not there previously. The menu duplicates functions of the options below it, but also offers items that are completely useless in the Page namespace, like category and redirect insertion options, and the ability to sign my posts (in the Page namespace ??). This looks like Wikipedia-specific editing content misapplied to the Page namespace. --EncycloPetey (talk)22:54, 30 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
And for those of us who don't have the editing toolbar turned on, there is no grey handle to drag. I've got one line of text visible in header and footer, and four lines in the Page body box. The page image is a piece from the middle and can't be scrolled, so the Page: namespace is unusable for me, unless I turn the toolbar back on. It has no useful functionality for me, other than the occasional need to do OCR and it just wastes space on a smaller screen <grumble>. N.B. The "Insert" drop-down menu is the CharInsert gadget and is supposed to appear at the bottom of the Edit window between the footer box and the Summary.Beeswaxcandle (talk)07:45, 31 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
Addendum: It seems the page height value is now made uniform across all namespaces. So, when I enlarged the Page namespace editing window, it meant that I also made the Module and Author namespace windows larger, but the calibration is off. What is a good size in the page namespace is too tall in other namespaces; and a height that is good for Author and Module namespaces is too small for the Page namespace. The result is that I'm constantly having to adjust by edit window height every time I shift to working in a new namespace. --EncycloPetey (talk)16:22, 31 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
If you don't use the editing toolbar, you may add a style to the class wikiEditor-ui-view in your common.css, e.g.
Thanks, but it didn't work. It starts up okay at normal height, but then shrinks down to the four lines etc. as the page completes loading. So, there's something in the patch that is overriding.Beeswaxcandle (talk)07:31, 3 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Something new has just lost my ability to resize the edit window in the Page namespace. I will have to stop editing until this is fixed, since I cannot see enough of the text at one time to be able to proofread. I had a properly sized window until a few minutes ago, when I started a new page without window resizing. This problem exists on other Wikisource projects in their Page namespace equivalent as well, not just here. --EncycloPetey (talk)01:12, 5 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
They tried as far as I understand to revert last week's issues. Normally we should be back where we were. Is the window still too vertically small? I can't reproduce anymore. —Alien 3 3 307:29, 5 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
It is no longer too small, but I have still lost the option to resize the window. There are times when I would rather run the scan page and edit window above each other, such as when proofreading footnotes that contain Greek. Without the option to alter the size of the edit window, this is still impossible. --EncycloPetey (talk)14:38, 5 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
I just wanted to add here that I've found that in the Monobook skin, there's no scroll-bar in the ProofreadPage editing window, which makes it extremely difficult to proofread large pages. This behavior happens in both Edge and Firefox, and has been happening for me for a few weeks now. Screenshot attached to the right. I'm not even sure if the above issue on Phabricator quite covers what I'm seeing.Mathmitch7 (talk)16:01, 16 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:19 days ago3 comments3 people in discussion
There are several primary source documents that I know are public domain (hundreds of years ago) that I'd like to add to Wikisource, but I am a bit confused; how do I start the new page? Is there a template? How does copyright apply to translations?VidanaliK (talk)01:06, 31 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
Have you readHelp:Beginner's guide to adding texts? You should start by uploading a scan of the work to Commons, then create an Index here based on that scan.
Translations have their own separate copyright status. For a translation to be acceptable here, both the original and the translation need to be in public domain. --Beardo (talk)02:11, 31 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
@VidanaliK: You can also start with proofreading or validating indexes that have already been uploaded by somebody else, e. g. within theMonthly Challenge collaboration, which might be easier for a beginner. Or if you have some specific scan that you want to transcribe here and need some help, we can help you with the technical stuff like uploading and creating the Index page. --Jan Kameníček (talk)21:40, 31 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:18 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion
I just wanted to note, since many national anthems have been put up for deletion as of late, that doing an actual transcription project ofNational Anthems of the World (1960), a text which was not renewed, might be a worthwhile endeavor so that we can have pages for specific countries' national anthems. I checked, and most of our national anthems that were considered for deletion did not originate from this collection. We've already more or less proven the Latvian and Portuguese anthems in this text are in the public domain, and many or most of the others likely are also. But the tricky thing is we will have to assess each of the anthems' copyrights individually, since for various reasons some originals or translations that appear in this book may have some way they were URAA'd or otherwise still under copyright, as has been noted before in the CV discussion threads. Pinging@MarkLSteadman, @TE(æ)A,ea.: as users who might be interested in this. Consider this somewhat of a request, as I can't work on sheet music and LilyPond myself (yet). I can help on the copyright parts if needed.SnowyCinema (talk)12:56, 31 January 2026 (UTC)Reply
From what I've seen it appears to be every page that uses that template where more than one page is transcluded within the template.ToxicPea (talk)00:44, 4 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:17 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Latesttech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.Translations are available.
Updates for editors
The "Page information" feature, which gives validating information about a page (example), now automatically includes a table of contents. If there is a localMediaWiki:Pageinfo-header page created by individual users, it can now be removed.[6]
View all 21 community-submitted tasks that wereresolved last week. For example, VisualEditor previously added bold or italic formatting inside link descriptions, making the wikicode complex. This has now been fixed.[7]
Updates for technical contributors
There was no XML dump on 20 January. Additionally, from now on, dumps will be generated once per month only.[8]
The MediaWiki Interfaces team removed support for all transform endpoints containing a trailing slash from theMediaWiki REST API. All API users currently calling those endpoints are encouraged to transition to the non-trailing slash versions. If you have questions or encounter any problems, please file a ticket in phabricator to the#MW-Interfaces-Team board.
Users are reminded that the Wikimedia Foundation has shared some guiding questions for the July 2026–June 2027 Annual Plan onMeta andDiff. These focus on global trends, faster and healthier experimentation, better support for newcomers, strengthening editors and advanced users, improving collaboration across projects, and growing and retaining readership. Feedback and ideas are welcome on thetalk page.
Latest comment:17 days ago3 comments2 people in discussion
Hello. For the last few days I've been having a strange issue with the editing interface. The left box (where I can actually edit the text) doesn't have a roll bar, and the text just keeps going, with parts of it behind other elements, which makes it not viable to edit. It has something to do with my account, since it works after I log off it goes back to normal. It affects only Wikisource in several languages. I tried changing the appearance and disabling all gadgets, and the problem persists. Any one else dealt with this?HendrikWBK (talk)18:08, 2 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:14 days ago3 comments3 people in discussion
In one of the works I've been proofreading,Page:The reference shelf v4 no5 1926.djvu/45 there is an obvious error in the paragraphs of text currently marked using the SIC template. The chapter is a reprint from the Educational Record, and based on a check ofthe original it seems that the line "appropriations. Most students of government, however," has been accidentally swapped with "appropriations totaling two hundred million dollars.". What would be the best way of handling this?Arcorann (talk)00:21, 3 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
I would put a note in the page header when it gets transcluded, something like
{{header|...|notes=Note: the source text contains errors, which have been reproduced faithfully. The errors are: The lines "[Line A]" and "[Line B]" at [insert location] have been accidentally swapped. The passage should read: "[The original passage]". The original passage can be read here: [link]}}
You're going to get a conflict here between the people who think the purpose of WS is to be an exact transcription of pages, and nothing more, and those who think the purpose is to create a work that someone might actually want to read. Personally, I'd either just swap the lines back (with a note in the source page), or use SIC.qq1122qq 09:31, 4 Feb 2026 (UTC).
I think that this range of text is too large for SIC to be reasonable. (Such a large amount of text, all underlined, would be quite ugly.) I would place the text in the correct position and use a reference with {{user annotation}}.TE(æ)A,ea. (talk)15:10, 5 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Because texts which use such spellings usually use them extensively, and we'd end up with a sea of tooltips.
Because it means assumptions from our part and decisions on how it "should" look that would be integrated into the text about everywhere.
(Specific to using {{SIC}} Because it implies that such spellings are errors: to quote the doc,This template should only be used for words that are actually typos. It is not for indicating a different or obsolete spelling.)
(Because it could be largely vain endeavour knowing tooltips are not supported by a wide range of devices.)
More specifically, I at any rate strongly opposerequiring tooltips because that would mean tons of unneeded work.
And then on reasons to do so:
intelligibility: we host published editions, not modernisations. What we offer is supposed to be the work as it was.
accessibility: erm, why? I don't see the link with the topic at hand. As I said above tooltips arevery inaccessible so it wouldn't change much accessibility-wise.
I'm not concerned about tooltips as such, I'm concerned about a screen reader coming across a bunch of wonky spelling nonsense that a blind person will hear as a string of gibberish or a deaf person who can read standard English will see as a bunch of gibberish. If we can make this intelligible to a person who is using assistive technology or who is literate but has never heard English, why wouldn't we? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯20:47, 3 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
I did consider that for cases that have a lot of eye dialect spellings for a certain character, but there are also works where there are very occasional deliberate misspellings like this and it seems a little much to create an entire secondary edition just for a handful of words. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯21:16, 3 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Because screen readers have the option of "go back and spell that word for me", and the English language already has objectively absurd spelling rules, and idiosyncratic spelling is not that difficult to understand. It might take a few pages to get your bearings, but tbh, sometimes that's part of the appeal. Phonetic spelling is often indistinguishable from the "correct" spelling when read aloud anyway (e.g. skool vs school), and considering that a large proportion of wikisource texts are 100+ years old, if a reader can't handle the idea that language and spelling change over time, they're probably in the wrong place anyway. —Tosca-the-engineer18:33, 4 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
For TV programs, they will subtitle the speaker if they believe the dialect is going to interfere with the ability of a viewer to understand what is being said. That's a form of annotation, and we already have a process in place of creating annotated editions, as previously mentioned. --EncycloPetey (talk)14:45, 5 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
This would be inappropriate use of {{SIC}}, which should only be used for errors, not intentional differences; the use of eye dialect is obviously an intentional choice, so marking it as incorrect (using {{SIC}}) would be misleading. For intelligibility, an annotated version is more appropriate; (although I haven’t finished it,) some years ago I was working on transcribing a text with much in the way of nonstandard English. My solution was to keep the text as is, with no adjustments, in the standard transclusion, and use many instances of {{asw}} to create a “modern” English rendition. This could also be applied to a work with eye dialect, to create a “clean” version. However, in both cases, the modified version is more appropriately placed as an annotation. As for accessibility, well, eye dialect is also fairly inaccessible to people who don’t use screen readers, so I don’t think that there is a major difference in this respect. For comparison, if somebody wanted to listen to an audiobook of a novel which uses eye dialect, it would be strange if all dialogue was pronounced “correctly,” without any indication of the eye dialect in the text. Thus, there’s no reasonfor it, and as for reasonsagainst it, it is the goal of Wikisource to create an accurate transcription of the text.TE(æ)A,ea. (talk)15:10, 5 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
This adds up, especially re: {{SIC}}. I suppose the problem may be with the template itself: using "sic" in a text does not only apply to actual typos or errors, but any usage of language that could reasonably be perceived as an error. So we have restricted this template to one of the two main uses of the word, which means that I have proposed a non-solution based on the scope of the template. It seems like an annotated version is the only solution based on the existing templates and best practices. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯15:19, 5 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
FYI: Spotlighting the World Factbook as We Bid a Fond Farewell
I am working on rounding up folks to help put up current editions of theThe_World_Factbook text - the most current years just lead to a field of red links. I think this is just a copy paste job from the internet archive, unless anyone has a more bot-directed idea. --Phoebe (talk)22:41, 11 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
psthis page may be helpful; and the archive has now made acollections page. -- 22:47, 11 February 2026 (UTC)
Latest comment:14 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Is anyone else bothered by pop-ups on the Watchlist. I keep getting them, over and over, on every project where I am active, which is about seven projects right now. I know some folks are active on even more projects. Is there a way to opt out of the pop-ups across all projects without having to visit every project one by one and click through them each time on each project? --EncycloPetey (talk)14:48, 5 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Do translations done only for the Marxist Internet Archive meet inclusion criteria?
Latest comment:14 days ago15 comments5 people in discussion
For example, the translation at "What is an Anarchist?" appears to have been done only for the Marxist Internet Archive, sourced tothis page. Many others by the same translator appear to be a similar situation. As this is an online source, where these translations seem to be self-published without editorial controls, how do we feel about these? Do they meet our inclusion criteria?SnowyCinema (talk)15:38, 5 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
It is just a web page which can disappear any time. We should host transcriptions of texts published in a fixed stable format, we should not be doing a mirror to the Internet. --Jan Kameníček (talk)16:23, 5 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
No one is suggesting "mirroring the Internet": that's completely insane. There are plenty of very valuable educational and cultural documents that originate online and there's no reason why a digital-first or digital-only work that is otherwise in our scope ceases to be. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯18:04, 5 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Of course. That is why I was not talking about digital-first (or -only) but about non-fixed web pages. Nothing against fixed electronic documents (e.g. pdfs), which can be easily uploaded to Commons.—unsigned comment byJan.Kamenicek (talk) .
On the topic of these translations being "otherwise in our scope", I'm going to check that. So, when reading through the relevant policy atWS:Translations, it says (emphasis mine):
Published translations (public domain or open-licensed) have been created and released by an external translator and publisher. They allow the project to fill Wikisource withpeer-reviewed, edited content and verifiable translations into English.
This seems to at bestimply, and at worst outright rule, that peer-reviewed translations are the only thing we want at enWS, besides user translations at the Translation: namespace. And this is an official Wikisource policy. So, were MIA translations peer-reviewed? They don't appear to me to have been, so unless I'm mistaken about either the meaning of the policy or the situation behind marxists.org works, I think a number of these should be considered for deletion.SnowyCinema (talk)18:22, 5 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Ah, on inspecting that book, there's a problem. The book does not internally state that any of it has a free license. Here's the copyright notice in full, as can be seenhere:
@MarkLSteadman: I was going to say maybe we could bring a scan of it here to enWS, but this makes that a bit of an issue. The copyright status of the introduction and the cover, and possibly some of the other work within it, seems up in the air. Any ideas?SnowyCinema (talk)18:55, 5 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Given the date, I'd assume that it would have been published on paper to be copyrighted.HathiTrust theoretically has a source, but a school newspaper sans copyright notice that has a list of the lyrics for popular hits is a questionable source.--Prosfilaes (talk)00:31, 11 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:9 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Latesttech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.Translations are available.
Updates for editors
Logged-in contributors who manage large or complex watchlists can now organise and filter watched pages in ways that improve their workflows with the newWatchlist labels feature. By adding custom labels (for example: pages you created, pages being monitored for vandalism, or discussion pages) users can more quickly identify what needs attention, reduce cognitive load, and respond more efficiently. This improves watchlist usability, especially for highly active editors.
A new feature available onSpecial:Contributions showstemporary accounts that are likely operated by the same person, and so makes patrolling less time-consuming. Upon checking contributions of a temporary account, users with access to temporary account IP addresses can now see a view of contributions from the related temporary accounts. The feature looks up all the IPs associated with a given temporary account within the data retention period and shows all the contributions of all temporary accounts that have used these IPs.Learn more.[9]
When editors preview a wikitext edit, the reminder box that they are only seeing a preview (which is shown at the top), now has a grey/neutral background instead of a yellow/warning background. This makes it easier to distinguish preview notes from actual warnings (for example, edit conflicts or problematic redirect targets), which will now be shown in separate warning or error boxes.[10]
TheGlobal Watchlist lets you view your watchlists from multiple wikis on one page. Theextension continues to improve — it now properly supports more than one Wikibase site, for example bothWikidata andtestwikidata. In addition, issues regarding text direction have been fixed for users who prefer Wikidata or other Wikibase sites in right-to-left (RTL) languages.[11][12]
The automatic "magic links" for ISBN, RFC, and PMID numbers have beendeprecated in wikitext since 2021 due to inflexibility and difficulties with localization. Several wikis have successfully replaced RFC and PMID magic links with equivalent external links, but a template was often required to replace the functionality of the ISBN magic link. There is now a newbuilt-in parser function{{#isbn}} available to replace the basic functionality of the ISBN magic link. This makes it easier for wikis who wish to migrate off of the deprecated magic link functionality to do so.[13]
A new global user group has been created:Local bots. It will be used internally by the software to allow community bots to bypass rate limits that are applied to abusiveweb scrapers. Accounts that are approved as bots on at least one Wikimedia wiki will be automatically added to this group. It will not change what user permissions the bot has.[16]
Latest comment:8 days ago4 comments2 people in discussion
Hello, I just noted this onthe work's talk page, but I've noticed that February's (first) Proofread of the Month,Index:Modern Tendencies in Sculpture.djvu, ismissing at least two pages. I haven't gone through every single page to verify those are theonly two missing pages, but this seems to be a major problem. Advice is appreciated -- In the meantime, I'll double check the other pages in the scan; and try to find a scan that includes the missing pages, so the file can be fixed ASAP. --Mathmitch7 (talk)00:19, 10 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:7 days ago5 comments3 people in discussion
Is there anyone whom I could trouble, please, to make a PDF/ DjVu file from the 11 images inc:Category:The Dweller In The Darkness, splitting the double-page spreads where needed?
Latest comment:6 days ago11 comments4 people in discussion
I've just been informed that I've been missing off {{authority control}} from the Author: pages I create. If it's a requirement to put it on Author: pages, can we not add it to the default template for Author pages? Otherwise I'm sure I'll start forgetting again at some point.Qq1122qq (talk)20:12, 13 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
On a related note, can someone with the ability to run scripts on the sites add the template to any Author: pages I've created that don't have them?Qq1122qq (talk)20:14, 13 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
It was included on all the author pages that I have created using the default template, at the bottom, after the note about license. I don't know why Qq did not get those. --Beardo (talk)20:57, 13 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
When I create a blank author page (e.g. for Author:Banana) this is what I get:
{{author
| firstname =
| lastname = Banana
| last_initial = Ba
| birthyear =
| deathyear =
| description =
}}
==Works==
I have no idea when/where I would use {{Author/preload}} - if there are settings I need to change in order to get better defaults, let me know and I'll change them. (edit: line breaks not displaying properly there but I don't want to mess with the threading markup)Qq1122qq (talk)21:05, 13 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
When I create an author page it has nothing in the box, but within the text above, there is a line which says "Click to preload this page with an author template" - when I click that, it gives the header, the works subheading and then below those:
"<!-- please add author license here; see [[Help:Copyright tags]] -->
A edit box with nothing in it. Above it, the following text:
"This page does not exist yet; you can create it by typing in the box below and publishing the page. If you are new to Wikisource, please see Help:Adding texts.
You are editing in the author namespace. This page should include an {{author}} template. Please review its documentation and Help:Author pages.
Click to preload this page with an author template
As an alternative, English Wikisource has a gadget to preload this and other namespace-relevant templates.
Note: Birthyear and deathyear parameters are deprecated in favour of pairing the author page with Wikidata and extracting the requisite data. Search for this person on Wikidata: Beardo" --Beardo (talk)21:45, 13 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
There is a gadget the Editing section: "Preload useful templates such as header, textinfo and author in respective namespaces." So, looks like there's more than one way at present.Beeswaxcandle (talk)21:45, 13 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Is there a name for the use of a semicolon when it connects two complete, independent thoughts?
Latest comment:3 days ago3 comments3 people in discussion
Is there a name for the use of a semicolon when it connects two complete, independent thoughts, replacing a period in headlines? For example: "McDowell Homestead Razed by Blaze; Origin Unknown" Some newspapers do not use periods in headlines, so use that style, it must have a name.RAN (talk)17:53, 15 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
en:wikipedia:Semicolon#English covers the main use cases; I don't think there are specific names. For example, you can use them to coordinate clauses without the use of a coordinating conjunction; to combine two sentences; or to place between items in a list. The use you're describing is kinda a combination of those types; common to this type of"Headlinese". --Mathmitch7 (talk)16:46, 16 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
If people agree on that name, then it's fine. I was just sort of hesitant to name it that all alone because it seemed like a kinda modern phrasologly.Eievie (talk)15:31, 16 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Thanks. If I have to pick between "Exercise" and "Physical Fitness", I think I'll go with "Exercise". Nutrition is also part of physical fitness, and that seems like enough of a different topic that it should probably be a different portal?Eievie (talk)15:52, 16 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:3 days ago2 comments1 person in discussion
Hello, I've noticed an error: inA Cyclopaedia of Female Biography there is a link to "/Scacrati-Romagnli, Orintia/" but the correct name is "/Sacrati-Romagnoli, Orintia/" (this person on itwiki). I don't usually edit Wikisource and currently I don't have time to learn how to fix it, so I will appreciated if someone could do it for me. Thank youUna tantum (talk)15:47, 16 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:3 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Latesttech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.Translations are available.
Weekly highlight
TheSRE Team will be performing a cleanup of Wikimedia'sEtherpad instance, the web-based editor for real-time collaborative document editing. All pads will be permanently deleted after 30 April, 2026 – if there are still migration projects in progress at that point the team can revisit the date on a case by case basis. Please create local backups of any content you wish to keep, as deleted data cannot be recovered. This cleanup helps reduce database size and minimize infrastructure footprint. Etherpad will continue to support real-time collaboration, but long-term storage should not be expected. Additional cleanups may occur in the future without prior notice.[18]
Updates for editors
The Information Retrieval team will be launching anAndroid mobile app experiment that tests hybrid search capabilities which can handle both semantic and keyword queries. The improvement of on-platform search will enable readers to find what they’re looking for directly on Wikipedia more easily. The experiment will first be launched on Greek Wikipedia in late February, followed by English, French, and Portuguese in March.Read more on Diff blog.[19]
The Reader Growth team will runan experiment for mobile web users, that adds a table of contents and automatically expands all article sections, to learn more about navigation issues they face. The test will be available on Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Indonesian, and Vietnamese Wikipedias.
Previously, site notices (MediaWiki:Sitenotice andMediaWiki:Anonnotice) would only render on the desktop site. Now, they will render on all platforms. Users on mobile web will now see these notices and be informed. Site administrators should be prepared to test and fix notices on mobile devices to avoid interference with articles. To opt out, interface admins can add#siteNotice { display: none; } toMediaWiki:Minerva.css.[20][21]
View all 19 community-submitted tasks that wereresolved last week. For example, an issue onSpecial:RecentChanges has been fixed. Previously, clicking hide in the active filters caused the "view new changes since…" button to disappear, though it should have remained visible. The button now behaves as expected.[22]
Updates for technical contributors
New documentation is now available to help editors debug on-site search features. It supports troubleshooting when pages do not appear in results, when ranking seems unexpected, and when you need to inspect what content is being indexed, helping make search behavior easier to understand and analyze.Learn more.[23]
Latest comment:1 day ago4 comments3 people in discussion
I've started working on the Chicago Tribune issue that covered journalist Alfred "Jake" Lingle's death, but I'm not sure if I should make it a portal or author.Nighfidelity (talk)21:17, 16 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
If someone has written anything that was published in a place that we recognise as in scope, then they are an Author. Use theWorks about xxx subheading on the Author page for published works that are about the person. The Portal: namespace in this context is only for people who have not had any in scope publications.Beeswaxcandle (talk)21:30, 16 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 day ago15 comments6 people in discussion
Since we now have "works" that have been added from 1990s newspapers being kept under the idea they have no copyrightable expression, I felt like pushing back against this.WS:WWI says "Random or selected sections of a larger work are generally not acceptable." and "Wikisource does not collect reference material ... Some examples of these include Lists; Mathematical constants (such as digits of pi); Tables of data or results..." What is a death notice but a list of data? In fact, that is the argument for it not being copyrightable. We should not have tiny snippets of data from larger works included here as works on their own.Prosfilaes (talk)05:31, 17 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Keep Here is the example:Commons:File:Ruth Eleanor Borland (1914-1990) funeral notice.jpg. The form has not changed much in 150 years, it is designed to be terse since it is a paid advertisement. It can be read to completion just like a news article, unlike a few paragraphs of a Dicken's short story. It is created by filling out a form at the mortuary by a family member, two people filling it out would provide the same output. Anyone can read it and understand the content. It isn't a bunch of numbers, or other raw data. We exclude data dumps because they need context that is not contained within the data. For example we might host a published book that has lapsed into the public domain on the number pi, that mayalso contain pages of the digits of pi. But the book would be giving context to why we have several thousand numbers. We already host a large number of government research publications with pages of data. The difference is that the research publications come with context/explanations/trends/conclusions/overviews for the data. A raw data file would not. --RAN (talk)06:15, 17 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
If two people filling out the form would provide the same output, it's raw data. No, the digits of pi doesn't "need" context, especially not compared to one random obituary. Everyone knows what pi is, many of us know that it's supposed to be normally distributed, etc. Yes, the research publications come with context, etc.; your obituary doesn't.
"It can be read to completion" has never been the standard for an excerpt. There are many excerpts that can be read to completion, but WWI still clearly forbids them. If you're saying it's a paid advertisement,WS:WWI also says "Wikisource does not collect advertisements that are not publications themselves."
I'm not a fan of tiny snippets being taken as stand-alone. We do that for poems sometimes, but poems at least are artistic works that have a clear distinct identity. You want to see an author's poems on their author page.Commons:File:Ruth Eleanor Borland (1914-1990) funeral notice.jpg I think shows the issue quite well; what do we gain by hosting this on Wikisource? It's fully transcribed on Commons and it's not adding anything to Wikisource.--Prosfilaes (talk)07:24, 17 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
LeanKeep too. As said before, I don't think that these funeral notices arenecessarily extracts of larger works, but works in their own right, just like how a recipe in a cookbook could be considered its own work in some contexts (I've seen cookbooks where all the recipes were by different authors). Newspaper issues often have hundreds of articles (and we accept that each thing we'd call an "article" is its own work), often with very little there to distinguish what is and isn't an article, so with newspapers specifically it can be harder to distinguish "work" and "non-work". The notices are in prose form (even if just barely), so I don't think they're "lists" either. And the legal argument (in the US) for it being uncopyrightable is that it just contains basic facts—it says nothing about the form that those facts come in.SnowyCinema (talk)07:05, 17 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Would we accept a recipe from a cookbook? I would argue against it; it's not a separate work. I generally tolerate newspaper articles as works for pragmatic reasons; they're really all part of one composite work, but that composite work is huge and tedious. Literary magazines consistently get stories from them published separately. For a book on poets, would we let the chapter on Henry Timrod be uploaded alone? If no, I don't see why we should let one death notice be uploaded alone.--Prosfilaes (talk)07:24, 17 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
If the "chapter" on Henry Timrod is actually an essay, then it's a work. I think in that case, keeping that chapter here only would be about the same as keeping "Four O'Clock" only. But if it's actually just a chapter (and thus not its own work) then yes, delete that IMO.SnowyCinema (talk)15:27, 17 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Dispose of Under the argument of extracts from larger works being presented as works on their own. We either bring in the entire containing work or none of it. That's what the extracts policy is about (acknowledging that there some exceptions written in that policy). TheChicago Tribune for 1990 is under copyright. The fact that a few snippets are not does not change the overarching fact. In essence, all we're doing by bringing in these few random tiny chunks of various random newspapers is replicating what can be obtained from Legacy.com. We're not giving these snippets any imprimatur of validity, unlike the principal work of Wikisource. Note that we're not even bringing in the whole section of Death Notices from an issue of a newspaper—just one or two notices. This is not in alignment with the purpose of Wikisource. I mentioned the exceptions earlier: I don't see how a single Death Notice from a newspaper meets the exceptions.Beeswaxcandle (talk)07:08, 17 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
We shouldn't be "replicating what can be obtained [elsewhere]". Isn't almost all we do replicating what is available at other transcription projects like Project Gutenberg and Project Runeberg and a dozen other projects performing digitization/transcription/formatting. The 1990 death notice in question predates Legacy.com, which began in 1998. --RAN (talk)18:38, 17 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
No, we don't replicate what the other projects have. We may end up proofreading the same works, which is an expected outcome. But we do not pick up what they have done and put it here. Our policy is no secondary sources, instead we must be doing fresh proofreading. For me, the fact that a Death Notice probably doesn't carry copyright with it, is not germane to the wider issue of it being an extract from a larger publication (or publications if the Notice was published in several issues or several different newspapers). Wrt Legacy.com, I understood that they were pulling in older notices and not just those that have been published since they commenced. I've certainly found notices from the 1950s there, so I have no reason to think that a 1990 notice would not be available.Beeswaxcandle (talk)07:42, 18 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Note that saying it survived CV doesn't mean that it merits inclusion. Like I could upload a compiled computer program, we could argue about it's licensing but that is orthogonal to does it even belong here? And in general, yes it is an argument against inclusion, among other things it makes scan backing difficult, it should be listed as a subpage of it's parent work but the front matter of the parent work that would go there is copyrighted, etc. However, there are arguments to keep it, e.g. it has been reprinted later, the lag between creation and publication, the independent authorship and copyright, etc.MarkLSteadman (talk)08:54, 17 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
(Usually much or all of the front matter of a work is ineligible for copyright anyway) but yes, if we want to be consistent, we shouldn't allow "Four O'Clock" to stay either, because like the funeral notices which were admitted to have been reproduced on Legacy.com, "Four O'Clock" has been reproduced time and time again across formats since its 1940s release.
I wouldnot agree with this, but I'm just pointing out that this is where BWC's argument appears to lead us to.
And I was not arguing that it being keepable at CV automatically meant it can be included here. What made it seem like I was? In fact if you look at what triggered this discussion, I made that exact point in reverse—that CV was not the place to discuss this, so I recommended it be brought here. (Well, to PD, but I guess this is okay too.)SnowyCinema (talk)15:20, 17 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
It doesn't necessarily, as I said there are arguments that might distinguish between them. And in general, it is likely that it won't be absolute clear rules: e.g. if the death notice was a clipping from an 18th century newspaper preserved somewhere and that is all that survived would that merit inclusion in a transcription of that newspaper? The main points of differentiation are:
The type: things like independent copyrightable and textual nature of a short story as opposed to structured reference data or advertisements
How the work describes it: e.g. is it listed in the TOC as an independent work or appendix vs. unlisted / or as a chapter
The history: did it exist independently previously (e.g. is it a translation of an existing separately published work?)
Broader recognition of it as a independent work: e.g. does it have a WP page or listed on WP as a work? Does it have independent ids on the Wikidata page (e.g. "Four O'Clock" is ISFDB #1053104)? Was it reprinted or cited elsewhere? Was it posted as an independent work in an archive or listing (e.g. a scan of just the newspaper clipping mentioned at a digitized library collection)?
While for Four O'Clock these tilt one way, for a death notice they generally tilt the other.
I am okay with allowing "reference material", provided it's published in a manner that is otherwise acceptable underWS:WWI (and provided that the community agrees to updateWS:WWI accordingly).—However, we shouldnot be allowing extracts, unless they are entire worksper se and the collection they are extracted from cannot be hosted in its entirety for other reasons (e.g. a PD work in an otherwise copyrighted collection). —Beleg Tâl (talk)14:50, 17 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
(Note: I have not investigated the obituaries in question, and have no opinion regarding whether or not they should be considered worksper se) —Beleg Tâl (talk)14:52, 17 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:19 hours ago3 comments3 people in discussion
The license tag {{PD-US-periodical}} is used to indicate that different parts of a periodical may have different copyright statuses. It doesnot indicate whether any part of the periodical is in the public domain in the US. For this reason, I think that the "PD-US" in the template name is misleading, and I'd like to suggest that this template be renamed to something else, such as for exampleTemplate:License-periodical —Beleg Tâl (talk)16:05, 4 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
I think-US is appropriate because date of publication—which varies greatly with periodicals, and is mentioned in the template—is only of relevance to U.S. law.TE(æ)A,ea. (talk)03:24, 19 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
_funeral_notice.jpg){kind=link}