Talk:Wikimedia Canada/Wikisource Canada

I've set up this page to act as a place for brainstorming about what might be our first project: Wikisource Canada. We will hopefully expand to do a lot more, but an online library is a realistic goal that would be a good thing to cite for our non-profit application. Although our policies about Wikisource Canada will undoubtedly evolve through debate on wikisource.ca itself, I think we should start with a firm foothold of ideas. First we have to justify why we need to exist separately from Wikisource and Commons. Second, we should decide on a basic inclusion policy and a basic policy of who can edit. --Arctic.gnome 03:09, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

What makes us distinct from Wikisource and Commons

Our first task is explaining why we should exist as a separate website when we could just upload Canada-related items to Wikisource and Commons. I personally see a Canadian Wikisource and a Canadian Commons as acting more like a general-purpose library than a depository of free information. This model would allow us to have:

• A more liberal inclusion policy for works not available for commercial use (see “Inclusion policy” below)
• Ability to include things based on Canadian laws
• Ability to organize items in a way more befitting Canadian searches (ie, by province, French translations)
• Ability to include minutia related to Canada for the purpose of research, such as trivial government bills.
• Ability to include lists, numerical data, and charts; which generally aren’t allowed in Wikisource.
• Possibly some amount of original research.

Let me know if you have any other ideas about what would make us distinct or whether you like/dislike these ideas. --Arctic.gnome 18:08, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Hum, hum, did you know that you could actually do all of that on Wikisource ? More precisely :

• If it is non-commercial , it is not really free (so you’re right but I’m not sure the Foundation will support that).
• It is possible : s:en:Template:PD-Canada.
• Did you ever see s:en:Category:Canada and s:fr:Catégorie:Canada ? They are not perfect, but you could easily expand it.
• Nothing against that, there is such data.
• Nothing against that (I don’t know for the english-speaking, but on the french-speaking Wikisource, we accept everything that was published)
• There is Wikibook for that.

However, Canada is maybe not well representated on Wikisource, but I think it will be more efficient to do an intern project. Cdlt, VIGNERON * ^discut. 09:05, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Inclusion policy

Copyrighted information and CC-Attribution-NonCommercial

As I have mentioned, I think that we should be more open than WMF about accepting items that are under a non-commercial licence and things that are under copyright where the owner gives us permission to post. I see the top priority of a Canadian Commons as being for education and research about Canada, and while we would want items to be free as much as possible, I think we would be doing a disservice to people researching Canada if we excluded important information just because is isn’t 100% free (assuming we are still following the law, of course). This is especially true of things that are copyrighted by the House of Commons. They are fairly liberal with a lot of their copyrights, but not enough that they can be used on Wikisource. --Arctic.gnome 18:08, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

• I have no problem accepting some NC or fair dealing material as long as the restrictions are made clear to the potential re-users. I find some Wikimedians altogether too doctrinaire about their interpretation of free media. In the short term whatever can be in the Wikimedia commons or Wikisource.org should go there. This is more a financial determination than anything else. Images can use up a lot of storage capacity very quickly. When we have an established donor base, and are able to give charitable receipts such a policy can be reconsidered. Eclecticology 07:55, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

I think making a site that allows images will be Phase 2, which may have to wait until after we are incorporated. For now I'd be happy with a site that allowed NC content, as we could then upload a bunch of stuff under crown copyright. --Arctic.gnome 01:07, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Reference material

I think we should find a way to allow for the inclusion of information like technical numerical data that is inappropriate for both Wikipedia and Wikisource. --Arctic.gnome 18:08, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

• Perhaps, but proceed with caution. This could easily get out of hand. Eclecticology 08:00, 18 July 2009 (UTC)
  • Agreed; we would have to have fairly strict rules about what to include, and I'm note sure how we'd do that, but I think there is some information like old census data that would be great to have online and is currently only available in archives. --Arctic.gnome 00:53, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
    • Some of this stuff would already be allowed in the current en:Wikisource, if anybody really wanted to do what is needed. The requirement is to fairly reproduce the documents, and avoid a selective treatment that would emphasize a particular POV. Eclecticology 17:30, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Original research

We cannot allow everything that people write to be included, but I think we may be able to come up with a set of strict rules to let us sometimes publish new information. --Arctic.gnome 18:08, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

User policy

We definitely want to be a wiki and allow anyone to add content. I even think we may want to let IPs create new pages. However, I think that we should restrict editing of pages once they are complete. If someone uploads some important speech from 1800 and a vandal comes by and makes a subtle change, it may be a very long time before someone notices. For this reason I think we should turn on flagged revs with a fairly high bar for any page that is nothing but a verbatim historic text or speech. --Arctic.gnome 18:08, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

I would oppose allowing IPs to create pages, as that provides no security from random crap being created---vandalism is somewhat more likely to be noticed. And I would support FR being turned on in the strongest possible terms. Roux 06:56, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Allowing IPs to edit or create pages is not a big problem as long as the site is still small. We want to encourage more people to become involved. Having flagged revisions from the beginning will be more important. The subtle changes in source documents have less to do with vandalism than with people trying in good faith to correct misspellings or modernize archaic spellings. I have always felt that flagged revisions should be about more than vandalism, but I have no idea about how many different kinds of evaluation the software can handle. Eclecticology 07:32, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't think we would have to ask much of the softwere. There are very few cases where one would need to make a change to a page that only contains a historical document, so until the site is really big we can just have established users mark edits as checked. --Arctic.gnome 00:55, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Logistics

We had a couple people say that they know how to set up a wiki and Ec already owns wikisource.ca, which I think would be a fine address for us. I would also be willing to chip in for hosting costs until we get chapter status and can apply for a grant. --Arctic.gnome 03:13, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

• Can anybody come up with cost estimates for the site, and possibilities for what different ISPs might offer. Eclecticology 07:14, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

• Any updates on this issue? I am new to the project but I am very interested to help with the project. Bilal Abdul Kader 03:51, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Nothing so far. As I've said before, it's the technical stuff that I find difficult to handle. Eclecticology 05:01, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

I am interested in pushing forwards to set up a chapter. It seem some interest regarding this has faded. Once the chapter is set up contributions to running projects like this will be tax free making asking for donations much easier. I think we need a minimum of three people. Email me if others are interested.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:34, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

I have a couple of friends who have operated computer networks / sites who are willing to help on the technical stuff of setting up a wiki. I have added this to the Potential projects.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 08:55, 20 June 2010 (UTC)