Handling primary sources, or Project Sourceberg

What to do about primary sources? People like to add them to Wikipedia, but people also are (rightly) disturbed by their presence. Is the answer to enter an arms race in which the Primaryists add and the Pedists (short for Pure Encyclopia-ists) delete?

No.

Another problem: people with a firmly held take on a subject can take over entries. This is good if their take is externally supportable and not just an idiosyncratic view. Right now about the only way this can be discovered is through a lot of haggling in the entry and in Talk, though creating related entries that surround a topic also helps. But the best way would be to show references.

I think the long term solution is to make a complementary Wiki (or perhaps namespace) just for handling primary sources/original texts. Maybe it would have the texts, maybe it would just link to external sources. It could be to Project Gutenberg what Wikipedia is to Nupedia.

Most important of all, it would allow Wikipedians to easily and specifically reference sources.

Maybe it should be called Project Sourceberg.

Project Sourceberg Mission

Allow people to handle primary sources better than currently, so that noone gets upset. Maybe that means provide a repository for primary sources; maybe that means figure out how to improve the Wikipedia interface for linking to outside repositories.

Name suggestions

Project Sourceberg is a w:pun on Project Gutenberg whose initials, PS, also stand for Primary Sources (and Post Scriptum). The name deliberately refers to Project Gutenberg so as to forge a connection which will hopefully become strong. Some of the idea was to have a brief acronym (PS) which could also be used in crosslinking with the main Pedia.

However, as one person asserted, Gutenberg is named after someone, Sourceberg just sounds like someone ran out of ideas (a similar argument applies to wikipedia, but at least that's descriptive). Though it does follow the tradition set by Projekt Runeberg (for Nordic languages).

However, http://ps.wikipedia.com is reserved for the Pushto language Pedia (the language of the Pashtuns of Afghanistan).

WikiBiblion is the name currently being used for a page which lists primary sources already entered into Wikipedia. It would make sense as a name for a project with a more defined misison.

Wiki Sourcetexts is another proposal, which could be abbreviated to WST. But WST doesn't make sense on its own.

sources.wikipedia.com But what would short acronym/abbr. be? "Source"?

ref.wikipedia.com Reference Electronic Folio

viz.wikipedia.com Virtual Information Zone?

doc.wikipedia.com. Maybe someone can come up with a good expansion of DOC.

Necessary features

Wikipedia is designed for anonymous, constant editing, which is great for the accumulative, morphing encyclopedia entries. Project Sourceberg needs to encourage easy additions and corrections but discourage arbitrary editing of the primary texts.

1. Different interface; maybe three fields, one for prefatory comments, one for the text itself, and one for external references

2. Easy reference/crosslinking to Wikipedia, like with links such as (from Wikipedia) [[ps:The Declaration of Independence]] or (from PS.Wikipedia) [[w:History of the United States]].

3. Alternate formats of texts, such as text, HTML, multiple-page HTML, wikified text, etc.

4. Understanding of scope and mission; we don't want to try to duplicate Project Gutenberg's efforts; rather, we want to complement them. Perhaps Project Sourceberg can mainly work as an interface for easily linking from Wikipedia to a Project Gutenberg file, and as an interface for people to easily submit new work to PG.

I would rather see Wikipedia cooperate very closely with both w:Project Gutenberg and the w:Online Book Initiative so we can easily link to their databases. I think that the Wikipedia should have articles about significant original works like w:Shakespeare. It should include excerpts and an external link to the aforementioned databases where readers can download the entire piece. <>< w:tbc

5. Project Sourceberg, preferably, would have a content-agnostic layer which would allow any source, from book to LP to website to bumper sticker, to be referenced. That way whatever source material is appropriate to the entry (the w:Star Trek entry would look different from w:Punic Wars) could be references.

On top of that layer would be the format-specific tools that would, say, link into Project Gutenberg, etc.

Add your own ideas; be bold in editing.

Getting it going

We could definitely start Project Sourceberg as a plain vanilla Wiki and quickly implement the [[ps:*]] notation, and just begin by moving off the primary sources that are already on Wikipedia, like the Constitution and the GPL.

Related commentary

There are numerous other discussions of the primary sources problem, which should be listed below.

Note some primary sources have already been copied to wikipedia; a few are listed at WikiBiblion.

Why we are reinventing the wheel?

Larry Sanger, among others, wonders what the point is. Project Gutenberg already exists. What really is the need for having this project?

The short answer is that people are going to add primary sources to Wikipedia, whether some people want them to or not. But Wikipedia isn't well equipped to handle primary sources. So instead of internecine fighting, the community can develop a part of Wikipedia which is well equipped to handle primary sources.

Why not just use Project Gutenberg?

1. It's a lot harder to link to Project Gutenberg than it is to another page in Wikipedia.

2. If a person has access to a primary source which isn't on Project Gutenberg, it's a lot easier and faster to add it to Wikipedia than it is to Project Gutenberg.

3. Some primary sources really do make sense being in Wikipedia; even paper encyclopedias often contain particularly important or brief primary sources, such as the w:Gettysburg Address or the w:periodic table.

How to complement Project Gutenberg =

If the main reason people are adding primary sources is that it's too hard just to link to Project Gutenberg, then maybe the main purpose of Project Sourceberg is to work as an interface for easily linking from Wikipedia to a Project Gutenberg file, and as an interface for people to easily submit new work to PG.

Sundry unincorporated commentary

And, like Larry, I'm interested that we think it over to see what we can add to Project Gutenberg. It seems unlikely that primary sources should in general be editable by anyone -- I mean, Shakespeare is Shakespeare, unlike our commentary on his work, which is whatever we want it to be. -- w:Jimbo Wales

Then again, is Shakespeare Shakespeare? There's all the different folio versions, etc. But more the type of editing which would be useful and really great to encourage would be annotation, etc.--not changing the text but wikifying it, etc.

I think that we could really create something that was halfway in between PG and WP, that would be useful for both, maybe exploiting the Wiki philosophy for marking up texts in a free-form manner; Project Sourceberg could become a definitive repository for annotated texts.

Just an idea. I really think that if we just set up something that links PG to WP in some easy-to-use way, and allow flexibility in how people use those links, remarkable things will happen (that may go beyond the formal scope of either). --TheCunctator

I haven't really thought a lot about this, but I do think there is some use to our having some primary sources. Even though I helped start it, maybe not Shakespeare. But stuff like the U.S. Declaration of Independence, where the article itself might be longer than the document it's about, it seems that might be a good idea. That could be a rough rule of thumb: it's OK to put a primary source into Wikipedia if the source is shorter than an ideal article, or series of articles, about the source.

For this, we don't need a new wiki. We can just use a new namespace! See http://wikipedia.sourceforge.net/fpw/wiki.phtml if you haven't already. --LMS

I'm confused. What does that link mean? Note also that Project Sourceberg isn't necessarily about making a Wiki--it's about helping Wikipedia handle primary sources better, which may involve a wiki, or editing the wikipedia code, or setting up a dialogue with the project gutenberg people. Project Sourceberg is a project, not a technology. --TheCunctator

The link is to w:Magnus Manske's new beta wiki, which will eventually (we hope) be used to run Wikipedia, and which has "namespace" technology. That can be used to implement the project.

A useful implementation of the project would consist simply of Wikipedia's modest collection of primary sources, which doesn't need a name. (Actually, it already has a name--WikiBiblion.) The name "Project Sourceberg" makes it sound as if we're engaged in an ambitious project, comparable to Project Gutenberg. Do you want us to be? I don't want to be. I don't really want to be in the business of uploading zillions of novels, etc., to Wikipedia. The Gettysburg Address is one thing; the complete works of Dickens is quite another. --LMS

I want to be engaged in an ambitious project. If you don't want to, that's fine, as long as you don't rain on my parade. The ambitiousness is in its usefulness, not necessarily its overhead. Perhaps I shouldn't make my PS:PG::WikiP:NuP analogy, because it implies that the only way PS would work is to be comparable to PG. The itch I want to scratch is the problem of usefully integrating primary sources with Wikipedia--right now it's awful, and people are rightly frustrated. If the problem can be fixed with minimal effort, then that's fine. If it takes a lot of effort, then that's fine too.

Part of the point is that even if PS involved the complete works of Dickens, it wouldn't be to Wikipedia. It would be to something else, in a way that would make it very useful for Wikipedia. --w:TheCunctator

OK, I don't want to rain on your parade. Maybe what's needed is a much clearer statement of what the proposal is, down to nitty-gritty details. --LMS