June 2026 Wikimedia Café meetups regarding the English Wikipedia Editor Reflections project

Hello! There will be two Wikimedia Café discussion opportunities during the last weekend of June. Both sessions will focus on the English Wikipedia Editor Reflections project. The featured guest in the Café will be User:Clovermoss. Participants may attend either or both sessions.

1. 27 June 2026 15:00 UTC (timestamp converter), at a time friendly to the Americas, Africa, and Europe

2. 28 June 2026 03:00 UTC (timestamp converter), at a time friendly to Asia and the Pacific

Please see the Café page for more information, including how to register!

↠Pine (✉) 04:06, 15 June 2026 (UTC)

Bot approval request: CosmiaNebulaEB1926(2)Bot

I'd like to request authorization for a bot — User:CosmiaNebulaEB1926(2)Bot, operated by me — to help transcribe the 1926 Encyclopædia Britannica — the 13th edition / "New Volumes", a three-volume supplement to the 11th edition (continuous volumes 30–32) — which I am digitizing from scans I purchased and uploaded.

• Purpose: Upload machine-OCR'd page transcriptions to the Page: namespace at pagequality level 1 ("Not proofread"), as a first-pass layer for the community to proofread. The bot never marks pages proofread or validated.
• Scope: Page: namespace for Index:EB1926 - Supplement Volume 1.pdf, Volume 2 and Volume 3, plus the associated front matter (contributor index, table of abbreviations, contents/index pages). ~3,500 pages.
• Tools / framework: Python with Pywikibot. OCR is produced offline (Google Gemini 3 Pro); before each upload the wikitext is checked against a local MediaWiki Parsoid lint endpoint plus an unclosed-tag/brace check, so only lint-clean text is posted.
• Degree of human interaction: Semi-automated and supervised. I review output; the push script fetches each page's current revision first and skips any page whose last edit was not the bot's own — it never overwrites a human edit. I remain available and will stop the bot on any complaint.
• Throttle: ≤ 1 edit/minute while unflagged; ≥ 5 s if/when flagged, and 20 s during peak hours.

Happy to adjust scope, naming, or rate to whatever the community prefers. Cosmia Nebula (talk) 18:55, 13 June 2026 (UTC)

Given it is for a single work you are working on and narrow in scope I  Support. Thanks for asking, here is the WS:Bots policy link for reference. 19:19, 13 June 2026 (UTC) MarkLSteadman (talk) 19:19, 13 June 2026 (UTC)

We tend to have a problem of OCR dumped => no one works on it immediately => discourages further work. It'd be better to add the OCR piece by piece, only if someone is actually going to work on that in the near future. — Alien  3
3 3 21:31, 13 June 2026 (UTC)

Note that this does create work by creating lint errors that need to be addressed manually. It would be good to show progress on proofing volume 1 before moving on. MarkLSteadman (talk) 14:33, 17 June 2026 (UTC)

• Cosmia Nebula: The OCR-dump issue is one which I personally feel, but I believe that it less salient with respect to encyclopedias in particular. Some notes: in the header, both the page number and the article names are in a larger font. In addition, these are now usually handled in index styles. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 02:40, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

You're now using the bot for tasks that have neither been listed above, nor approved, and that is the addition of transcluded unproofread text into Mainspace, e.g. Astronomy, Athens, Athletics, etc. Any bot approval would be limited to the tasks approved, and would not extend to additional tasks outside that scope. --EncycloPetey (talk) 23:07, 22 June 2026 (UTC)

I was unaware of this bot request because it had not been placed in this section. I have just blocked it from editing in the mainspace until there is support for it to do so. At present, it may continue in the Page namespace at the throttled pace unless there is agreement to grant it the flag, or for it to be stopped. I note that the User page for this bot is yet to be created. Please do so. The User page should detail who owns the bot (including a link to the owner's talk page) and what it is being used for. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 08:31, 23 June 2026 (UTC)

Index:The Lower Huronian Ice Age.pdf

I would appreciate if an admin could move all nine pages at Index:The Lower Huronian Ice Age.pdf to the corresponding pages at Index:The Journal of geology (IA journalofgeology161908univ).pdf, i.e. the pages from Page:The Journal of geology (IA journalofgeology161908univ).pdf/173 to Page:The Journal of geology (IA journalofgeology161908univ).pdf/182, inclusive. The redirects and the Lower Huronian Ice Age index can both be deleted. Thanks, Cremastra (talk) 18:33, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

Done. MarkLSteadman (talk) 17:53, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

Thank you! Cremastra (talk) 14:45, 15 June 2026 (UTC)

The Rebels; or, Boston before the Revolution

Could someone move this to The Rebels to remove the subtitle? Nighfidelity (talk) 15:39, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

Done and I updated the links from other pages, the header can be updated when you migrate to scans. MarkLSteadman (talk) 17:27, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

Thanks! Nighfidelity (talk) 20:28, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

Advertising validated texts

Hi, Is there a place for advertising validated texts? I can't find one. I think it would encourage people to validate more texts, if the result is proeminently displayed somewhere (e.g. on the main page on French WS: fr:Wikisource:Accueil). Yann (talk) 20:06, 16 April 2026 (UTC)

We advertise Proofread texts. Validated texts of note can be nominated as possible Featured Texts, but that does not always succeed because validation sometimes leaves many errors in the text. We have a former Featured text currently under review because it is full of transcription errors. The situation on French Wikisource may be better, but we often have new editors contribute to validation without understanding what that actually means. How does French Wikisource manage this issue? --EncycloPetey (talk) 21:19, 16 April 2026 (UTC)

There is no particuler process. AFAIK, new users mostly want to proofread new texts. Yann (talk) 19:25, 17 April 2026 (UTC)

@Yann: At least twice, it has been proposed to put a validated texts search box on the Main Page. Both Kaldari and Xover created working mock-ups for it (e.g. ). But it seems to have been forgotten about despite apparent support. I would definitely support having such a feature on the Main Page and it's kind of ridiculous that we don't have any way for visitors to discover our validated texts. Nosferattus (talk) 20:40, 17 April 2026 (UTC)

Reading through the old discussions, it seems the only problem was that many of our validated texts weren't actually in Category:Validated texts at the time. Back then we only had ~2500 texts in the category, but now there are 4,350, which seems like a decent number. Kaldari, Xover: Is this something we could move forward with? Nosferattus (talk) 21:11, 17 April 2026 (UTC)

Per Portal:Proofreading milestones, still missing much. (Maybe a situation like this.) — Alien  3
3 3 21:26, 17 April 2026 (UTC)

It looks like a lot of the validated indexes in Category:Index Validated are transcriptions of single images rather than texts per se, for example Index:"GIVE^ United War Work Campaign." - NARA - 512697.tif and Index:! Explosive objects in War in Ukraine, 2022 (01).jpg. This seems to explain some of the discrepancy. Nosferattus (talk) 16:01, 19 April 2026 (UTC)

@Kaldari, @Xover: Could we implement this? Yann (talk) 16:21, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

Also, keep in mind that validated texts aren't necessarily transcluded into Mainspace. We'd need to also check that the work is fully transcluded, and that the primary page of the work includes contents so that a download will work. Validation alone refers merely to the status of the individual pages. --EncycloPetey (talk) 16:26, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

Yes, of course this status is for whole books. And yes, they should be properly transcluded to be advertised. Yann (talk) 09:42, 13 May 2026 (UTC)

@EncycloPetey, @Yann: The mockup that Xover created only pulls from Category:Validated texts, not Category:Index Validated. So it's restricted to mainspace transcluded works that have Wikidata items. I would love to see this implemented. What would it take to make this happen? Do we need to do an RFC or could we just try it out (based on the previous discussions)? Nosferattus (talk) 18:04, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

We could use fr:Modèle:Validations as a framework. Yann (talk) 19:33, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

Bring in the template?--TunnelESON (talk) 00:18, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

@Yann, @TunnelESON, @Alien333, @EncycloPetey: I created Wikisource:Validated texts which could be incorporated into the main page (with some minor rearranging). It's based on a combination of Xover's mockup and some of the code at French Wikisource. The list is automatic and doesn't require any maintenance (which I thought would be best since there aren't a lot of people active here). I can also create a special category for works that shouldn't show up on the list if we need to sanitize it for some reason. If we add this to the main page, hopefully it would provide extra motivation for people to validate their favorite works. It would also finally give casual visitors a way to easily find finished works to read. Nosferattus (talk) 02:52, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

I'm not fond of that setup because (a) it takes up a lot of space, with a lot of space given to dates, (b) it highlights only the most recently validated texts, which fails to pull from most of our validated texts and could double-dip for works that are being proofread and validated in close proximity, with the same work appearing on the Main page twice in rapid succession, and (c) the work is merely a title. There are much better set-ups on other Wikisource projects. We don't need to reinvent a design when there are many good options already available. --EncycloPetey (talk) 21:35, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

I'd like to suggest that we consider a design that would slot into the space currently occupied by Featured Texts. The FT project has been barely hanging on for years, and we are the only major language Wiktionary that has such a project on its Main page. It may be time to retire Featured Texts and replace it on the Main page with a section highlighting Validated works. --EncycloPetey (talk) 21:38, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

• Just looking over the page, it seems to be quite wrong. Many of the items are sub-pages, which wouldn’t even be listed at “New texts.” Several of the dates are nonsensical—the Articles of Confederation sub-page was validated in 2009, and hasn’t seen any edits (including Page:s) since 2024, yet is claimed to be validated about a week ago. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 00:07, 21 June 2026 (UTC)

  The date is when the text (not the index) is listed as validated, typically from wikidata as is the case here. MarkLSteadman (talk) 00:51, 21 June 2026 (UTC)

Deletions

The book Bayou Folk is being moved from unsourced to a transcluded version. These pages need to be cleared as part of that. There's a proper version Bayou Folk/A No-Account Creole now, these are just leftover from an old copy-paste version in 2006.

• Bayou Folk/A No-Account Creole/I
• Bayou Folk/A No-Account Creole/II
• Bayou Folk/A No-Account Creole/III
• Bayou Folk/A No-Account Creole/IV
• Bayou Folk/A No-Account Creole/IX
• Bayou Folk/A No-Account Creole/V
• Bayou Folk/A No-Account Creole/VI
• Bayou Folk/A No-Account Creole/VII
• Bayou Folk/A No-Account Creole/VIII

Eievie (talk) 22:05, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

For deletion, tag with either {{delete}} (if it merits discussion, e.g. a different edition) or {{speedy delete}} giving redundant / G4 as a reason for cases where the original is unsourced and it is redundant. 00:55, 21 May 2026 (UTC) MarkLSteadman (talk) 00:55, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

I have tagged them with {{delete}} as speedy was declined and opened up the discussion at Wikisource:Proposed_deletions#Bayou_Folk/A_No-Account_Creole_unsourced_subpages MarkLSteadman (talk) 01:07, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

@Eievie: then that's what you should have said in the {{sdelete}}. You only talked about how small the subpages was, which is not a criteria for speedy deletion, whereas WS:CSD#G4 is. — Alien  3
3 3 07:00, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

These are now deleted after going through WS:PD. 21:50, 29 May 2026 (UTC) MarkLSteadman (talk) 21:50, 29 May 2026 (UTC)

Vote now in the 2026 U4C election

Eligible voters are asked to participate in the 2026 Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee election. More information–including an eligibility check, voting process information, candidate information, and a link to the vote–are available on Meta at the 2026 Election information page. The vote closes on 2 June 2026 at 00:00 UTC.

Please vote if your account is eligible. Results will be available by 14 June 2026. -- In cooperation with the U4C,

Keegan (WMF) (talk) 17:15, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

{{WD author}}

Is there a way to disable or fix the template? See The Octopus Cycle for an example of the Lua errors it seem to create. Nighfidelity (talk) 12:54, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

Pinging @RaboKarbakian: since they developed this template.—Tcr25 (talk) 16:02, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

It seems to maybe be a mistake in the redirects? It probably shouldn't be redirecting to the User page version (which maybe was for testing something). MarkLSteadman (talk) 17:50, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

Removing the redirect gives a different error - Template loop detected. And whilst editing, there appears this message - "Please note: there is already a template data block on the related page "Template:WD_author/doc"." And the entry on The Octupus Cycle disappears completely ! -- Beardo (talk) 19:12, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

It wasn't working right. I left a message about that at the module. I waited a weekend and a couple of business days and redirected them, a little more broken, to where they originated and wait for the module writers to show up. I did not have time to see who broke them and the reason they were broken. I am keeping an eye on them by having them redirect to my user directory. For sure, a module writer or such capable wiki technician will show up, and I will be able to show them how it was broken.

To get rid of the LUA errors, (well, most of them) end it with a space. {{WD author}}.

I am not going to beg for help for this; if I need to, I will look to see who broke them.--RaboKarbakian (talk) 14:33, 29 May 2026 (UTC)

A suggestion regarding Serialized Works in Periodicals

I know I know, this was a long and contentious subject that finally got resolved (see here and here), and I apologize in advance for kicking the hornet's nest.

That said ... I think it's really weird (like, upsettingly counterintuitively weird) that these pages are set up in mainspace directly, even though the entire edition exists under a different, unrelated mainspace page; as if they were two different unrelated publications.

There was a suggestion, in that original proposal, to place them as "Auxilliary subpage with an AuxToC", but this was decided against because of a very reasonable objection by @TE(æ)A,ea., that "This is improper because there isn’t a whole work within the Review by that title; the only thing within the Review (at the first level, which is where this is) are volumes".

However, I realized that we have another standard whereby we use auxilliary subpages; and that is WS:Annotations. In this case, the main text goes at Work/Section and the annotated text goes at Work/Annotated/Section.

So, I am suggesting, as an option that was not among the suggestions in the original proposal, that we use a parallel construction and implement a standard subpage tree for these serialized works: Periodical/Serialized/Work (instead of just Work, as is done currently; and instead of Periodical/Work, as was initially proposed)

This would reunite the serialized works with the periodicals they are serialized in, without implying that the serialized work is a direct subdivision of the periodical, and while taking advantage of a structural practice that is already in use. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 14:41, 29 May 2026 (UTC)

• Annotations are a separate matter; after all, annotations don’t exist in the original work, while Serialized does exist (if only as a concept, and not in any unique published form). The nearest analogy for me is for encyclopedias and some multi-volume novels, where there are both Work/Volume and Work/Article or Work/Chapter. This makes sense because the volumes exist only for the sake of the publisher’s convenience; there is no real difference if the article on “Arkansas” is at the end of the first volume or the start of the second volume. This is not the case for periodicals, because each issue is a separately published unit. Something like “The Atlantic Monthly/Random Poem” is significantly less useful because it removes the context of the publication of “Random Poem” from the hierarchy. On the other hand, for an article about that poem, the time of publication is inherent in the direct higher-level item of the encyclopedia; the volume is merely storage/reference information, and doesn’t provide unique publication information. Coming back to annotations, it is the equivalent of Annotation:Work and Annotation:Work/Section, but made possible within the limits of (Main):. I could understand how it could weird if (Main): was limited to only published works, but it’s not: we have many disambiguation pages for works so small that they are not separately published (like poems and short stories). Given this, the current system is perfectly natural. “Work” represents the entire work, and the component parts are just incidentally sub-pages of some third work. (In my opinion, “Periodical/Serialized/Work” implies “that the serialized work is a direct subdivision of the periodical”.) TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 15:31, 29 May 2026 (UTC)

  Your last point, is why I brought up WS:ANN—"Periodical/Serialized/Work" should no more imply that the serialized work is a direct subdivision of the periodical, any more than "Periodical/Annotated/Work" implies that the annotated work is a direct subdivision of the periodical. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 15:47, 29 May 2026 (UTC)

Table alignment varies by namespace

Does anyone know why this table, which is left-aligned in Page space and left aligned in Mainspace is right-aligned in Index space? --EncycloPetey (talk) 00:46, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

By testing, I have confirmed that removing the right alignment from the Style sheet does not fix the problem. --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:01, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

Done Problem solved. --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:04, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-23

MediaWiki message delivery 21:08, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

How to handle previously unsourced texts

I just added Index:Creatures that once were men (IA creaturesthatonc00gorkrich).pdf, but I'm not sure what should be done about the unsourced version at Creatures That Once Were Men. — Ilawa-Kataka (talk) 03:02, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

• For this, you can just transclude the scan-backed version over the original once you’ve finished the proofreading. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 03:18, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

Index:In the ice world of Himálaya, among the peaks and passes of Ladakh, Nubra, Suru, and Baltistan.djvu

Hi, Does anyone know why the OCR doesn't match the images? And how to fix it? I have tried purging the file several times on Commons and here, but no effect. Thanks, Yann (talk) 20:33, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

You can as in WS:Scan Lab for someone to regenerate the djvu to get them in sync, this is a longstanding issue with djvus imported via the IA Upload tool where particular images (like the calibration images here) cause the extracted OCR to get out of sync when it gets merged back in. MarkLSteadman (talk) 20:44, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

@Yann: The primary cause seems to be an issue where IA Upload does not handle IA pagination properly when constructing DjVu files which causes it to misapply text extracted from the IA OCR process and unfortunately it is a longstanding issue, e.g. see: phab:T412533, phab:T300761, phab:T194861, phab:T178197, etc. There are also a number of other tickets closed as duplicates of T194861. —Uzume (talk) 12:27, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

Then IA Upload is completely useless. The easiest is probably to start all over with the PDF: File:In the ice world of Himálaya, among the peaks and passes of Ladakh, Nubra, Suru, and Baltistan.pdf. Nowadays, I don't see any advantage to use DjVu. And this DjVu is really weird. How could it have 384 pages when the source file has only 370? Yann (talk) 19:54, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

There are 384 page scans in the original upload of scans to IA: . In then uploaded scan XML it labels some pages as DELETE so when IA generates its PDF / djvu they are ignored, but if you ask the IA upload tool to regenerate the file from the original scans, it does just that goes through the file and regenerates them all in sequence. MarkLSteadman (talk) 20:33, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

I don't know where this page comes from, but I doubt it should be there at that place. Yann (talk) 20:41, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

It comes from the first image in the uploaded scans ( and . If you look at the IA page for it and look at the right for SINGLE PAGE ORIGINAL JP2 TAR and SINGLE PAGE PROCESSED JP2 ZIP you can download the original scans provided as a zip / tarbell and see that the very first image is that page. MarkLSteadman (talk) 00:50, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

Basically, when the book was scanned, they included additional images (e.g. including a color calibration target or here a ruler for size). When you download and regenerate from the original scans (i.e. when you select "from original scans (JP2)" in the IA upload tool you get these additional images. MarkLSteadman (talk) 00:54, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

But these are not part of the book, so we do not need them for Wikisource. Yann (talk) 19:24, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

I answered the question about where they came from, just like the google cover sheets aren't "needed" for WS but are often included in scans for IA as well. If you don't want them in the final djvu you can download and delete them from the generated djvu just like deleting the cover sheet from a downloaded Google PDF. That said, I don't know whether there is interest on the Commons side in generating say color-calibrated extracted images, dimensions etc. in the future or users of that vs. going via IA directly for those who are interested. MarkLSteadman (talk) 20:21, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

@Yann: I agree with MarkLSteadman, the issue is that page scans are provided in an archive and a scandata XML file is generated that marks some of these scan pages as not part of the final product, however, when IA-Upload generates a multi-page DjVu, it creates single-page DjVu files for each page ignoring the scandata so it does not skip the scan pages that IA itself ignores for the final product (in the case of IA itself this is the PDF as they no longer support DjVu despite that having been the original format supported many years ago). Once IA-Upload merges all the single-page DjVu files into a multi-page DjVu, it then applies the text extracted from the IA OCR process. This often go awry though because the number of pages differs from what IA itself does. This means it will fail, create a corrupted output, or most frequently appear to work but the text will be applied to the wrong pages. I believe you are seeing the latter issue. The solution is to delete the appropriate pages and then delete and reapply the OCR text. Of course the real solution is to have IA-Upload adhere to the scandata as IA itself does and not generate single-page DjVu files for scan images in the archives that are not marked for final inclusion in the final product. —Uzume (talk) 21:28, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

Hi, You do not seem to offer a different point of view. But whatever was the reason, this can be closed. The work is now available at Index:In the ice world of Himálaya, among the peaks and passes of Ladakh, Nubra, Suru, and Baltistan.pdf. Yann (talk) 10:20, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

TemplateStyles broken

All templates which rely on TemplateStyles are now broken, at least in Page:. See, e.g., Page:The Purcell Papers (1880) - Volume 1.pdf/11, Page:TASJ-1-5.djvu/21. (You may need to “Purge cache” under “Page” first.) This issue doesn’t seem to propagate to (Main):, however. This issue is also present in action=submit when previewing edits. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 18:51, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

It seems to be a general issue sitewide, affecting this page, this one, and this one, regardless of the type of file. It is affecting basic functions like the {{center}} template. --EncycloPetey (talk) 19:03, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

It does seem to go away on refresh with me. Click submit --> Page broken. Click page again --> Page correct. 19:08, 3 June 2026 (UTC) MarkLSteadman (talk) 19:08, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

Yet I am seeing the same behavior at Spanish and Greek Wikisource, but not at French Wikisource. If it's breaking previsualization, that's still a pretty serious issue. --EncycloPetey (talk) 19:11, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

The same in French Wikisource, for example this page. • M-le-mot-dit (talk) 08:58, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

I'm getting the same problem, but only when I preview and on the first publish.

Page styles are also all broken in the same way, as far as I can tell. Cremastra (talk) 22:08, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

I'm seeing this issue if I hit purge but oddly it goes away if hit hard purge. I'm also seeing this issue when previewing edits. ToxicPea (talk) 02:41, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

I'm having the same issue. In Page:, clicking the 'Read' tab after saving clears it - presumably a similar action to F5 or the reload button. Chrisguise (talk) 05:48, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

{{smallrefs}} is another commonly used template that is broken (text size doesn't work), at least for me. Cremastra (talk) 13:37, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

A very nasty problem, indeed! But it only happens in the "preview" mode. Not when a page is actually saved! --Dick Bos (talk) 18:55, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

But I'm seeing {{rvh}} failing after a save, thus requiring a Purge to fix. --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:32, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

See Phab:T428215. • M-le-mot-dit (talk) 16:33, 5 June 2026 (UTC)

I've found a patch that matches the timeframe and changed style deduplication, and so could be the cause of this (see task). — Alien  3
3 3 19:23, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

Update: there's a fix incoming and should be fixed by wednesday (see task). — Alien  3
3 3 20:01, 8 June 2026 (UTC)

Happy to see that this very nasty problem is solved by now. But I still have some questions:

• why do these things happen? I suppose some changes are made in the software; but are these not thoroughly tested, before implementing?
• why does it take so long to repair this kind of problems? I remember this is not the first time we met a problem like this.

I just want to report that this kind of problems can cause serious troubles for users that are working with this software, day after day, and who are completely dependent upon the good and consistent behaviour of the software. It's of course ok, if changes must be made. But please let us know in advance, and test everything carefully! I sure want to help with testing in a safe environment. --Dick Bos (talk) 09:34, 10 June 2026 (UTC)

Re why stuff gets broken:

1. Wikisource and ProofreadPage are kinda in a niche, and function differently to most other things, so people often don't think to test with proofreadpage, which is also because
2. the software is complicated and really interconnected, and often it's not so much updates which were intended to change proofreadpage, as updates to some a priori unrelated code which happens to not work with proofreadpage (what happened here)

Re the the time stuff takes to fix:

1. deployments are made weekly, so typically stuff gets broken on a wednesday and is fixed the following wednesday (or the week after if we can't find it in seven days).
2. Also, often (as was the case here) it is not easy to find what broke things: it took me a few hours of searching in recent software changes to find the problematic patch (also that we aren't specialists of every software we use, so it's harder for us to find out what broke what).

Re how annoying it is: well, you should be saying that at the phabricator task rather than here, because we're also users and also frustrated. :) — Alien  3
3 3 09:53, 10 June 2026 (UTC)

Update Y Fixed since yesterday evening (affected pages may need to be purged) (patch was backported). — Alien  3
3 3 09:55, 10 June 2026 (UTC)

T. S. Eliot

Since we have no policy for the naming of Author pages, I request that the recent move of Author:T. S. Eliot to Author:Thomas Sterns Eliot be reversed. (1) This is the name by which he is known and published, (2) This is the name used for indexing him by the Library of Congress, (3) We previously had no page under his full name, not even a redirect, so it was not being used, (4) No policy exists to require this page move, and (5) the one existing essay (Wikisource:Author names) acknowledges the division of the community on this issue, and lists T. S. Eliot among the examples of authors known by more than one form of the name. --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:45, 6 June 2026 (UTC)

For (2), I misspelled it when moving; I intended for it to be at Author:Thomas Stearns Eliot. Nighfidelity (talk) 20:47, 6 June 2026 (UTC)

I have moved the page to the version with the a, as Sterns was certainly wrong. If it is decided to move it back to T. S., that can be done.

There had been some discussion which is now at Author talk:Thomas Stearns Eliot#Initials in page title -- Beardo (talk) 23:57, 6 June 2026 (UTC)

There have been several discussions, going back to at least 2011, when billinghurst first proposed that we mandate full Author names as a Style guide revision. That position was challenged by multiple editors, and reverted, leading to the Author names essay linked above which established that there are two points of view. Since then, two other similar discussions have happened, but neither of those discussions resulted in a consensus to overturn the previous consensus or to establish any policy requiring the page to be moved. --EncycloPetey (talk) 02:25, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

@Beardo: When you moved it "back" you moved it to a new location, not the original location. What is the justification for that move, as none has yet been offered? --EncycloPetey (talk) 02:27, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

I moved it to the place that Nighfidelity was trying to but messed up. I did not move it back because I felt that would be prejudging this discussion. I was trying not to decide one way or the other. -- Beardo (talk) 16:26, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

In doing so, and in saying "If it is decided to move it back to T. S., that can be done", you have tacitly supported a move that was made over three objections in the previous discussion on that page, and over community agreement in 2011. Why should we need additional support to restore the status quo, when discussion never supported the move in the first place? --EncycloPetey (talk) 16:34, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

Please can you give a link to this discussion from 2011 that you refer to. (That really should have been mentioned on the author talk page.)

If you want, I will move it back to where Nighfidelity put it, and leave you two to sort it out. -- Beardo (talk) 16:47, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

I concur, it should go the status quo ante while any discussion is going on. MarkLSteadman (talk) 19:22, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

Done, agreed. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 03:49, 17 June 2026 (UTC)

 Comment None of the reasons presented above, are sufficient to disallow moving an author page. We have no policy requiring that author pages use the names by which they are best known, or published, or indexed by LoC, nor are page moves forbidden unless explicitly dictated by policy. On the contrary, we have a long-established precedent of expanding author page names that contain initials, to use the author's full name instead.

HOWEVER

The name of this particular author page (Author:T. S. Eliot) has been previously discussed and the result was to leave the page where it was. A notice was also placed at Author talk:T. S. Eliot stating that "There is no consensus in the community to move this page to Author:Thomas Stearns Eliot." Because of this, and because I do not see any indication that there has been a change in the community consensus, I have moved the page back to its original location. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 04:04, 17 June 2026 (UTC)

I have also restricted page moves to "administrators only", since this is not the first time this page has been moved against consensus. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 04:14, 17 June 2026 (UTC)

Page namespace has broken alignment, page previews

I was just transcribing and instances of templates that use alignment (e.g. {{C}}) were not rendering correctly in the page namespace, but I gave it no mind, as it may be a weird quirk that will render appropriately when transcluded. But then, the image page previews stopped appearing spontanteously as well. Is something going on on the back end that is making the page namespace act wonky? ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 01:28, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

And just like that, it works. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 01:43, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

And now it doesn't again. Huh. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 01:45, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

This sounds like the same issue being discussed above in the "TemplateStyles broken" thread. --EncycloPetey (talk) 02:28, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

I thought that briefly, but then when the page previews didn't work, I thought it may be a namespace-wide issue. I haven't transcluded yet, so I don't know if it will fix itself in the main namespace. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 02:31, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

This is the same issue as in the above thread, which also concerns only page namespace. — Alien  3
3 3 07:02, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

Using bots vs collaboration

I work on Danish Wikisource and there most works seems to be worked on by individual editors and not together like for example on Wikisource:Community collaboration/Monthly Challenge/June 2026. Working together makes things more fun but you risk that things are done differently. For example I noticed that on one of the collaboration works Index:The Outsider.djvu it seems there is a mix of quotation marks (“ ” and " ").

I think it would be fairly easy to have a bot make OCR, create the pages, remove hyphenation and standardize quotation marks. I do that on Danish Wikisource.

But would that discourage people from collaborating? Or would it make collaborative work more enjoyable?

And which tools and bots exist here at English Wikisource that makes editing easier? Anything I could copy/adapt for Danish Wikisource? MGA73 (talk) 06:07, 8 June 2026 (UTC)

I would be in favor of having bots mass-create pages if those were for works that humans were definitely going to collaborate on, but otherwise, adding a huge glut of mostly correct scans (and sometimes, very wrong scans) will just make the quality lower. I am not smart enough to work with any actual bots, but one script that comes in very handy for me is User:Alien333/nobr.js. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:45, 8 June 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for the tip. But are line breaks not supposed to be kept for easier proof reading? And I agree it is a good idea to add pages on works where someone are actually going to check them. --MGA73 (talk) 18:10, 8 June 2026 (UTC)

Line breaks are automatically removed by the parser (generally), so technically it doesn't matter whether they are removed or not. That said, some editors prefer to remove them entirely, and some feel strongly that they should be removed. So no, line breaks are not "supposed" to be kept (at least not on enWS); but you can usually leave them in if you want. So long as the line wraps aren't preserved in the final transclusion, I believe it truly doesn't matter either way. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 13:20, 9 June 2026 (UTC)

Yes line breaks are removed by the parser so I thought they were supposed to be kept to make it easier to proof read pages. I think it is much easier to proof read if the lines in the text matches the lines in the image. If they are supposed to be removed then I think it would be easier if the OCR-engine automatically remove them. --MGA73 (talk) 16:33, 9 June 2026 (UTC)

Our Help:Formatting conventions page advocates for removing line breaks, but that is not a policy page, and none of our policies require removing them. I tend to remove them while proofreading, and definitely remove them when validating, but it can be helpful to retain the line breaks for first-stage proofreading, and in some cases for validating texts. But that potential benefit can disappear when works have more advanced formatting required, or have exceptionally long lines. There are situations where a line break in a formatted paragraph can lead to that text displaying strangely in the Page: namespace. --EncycloPetey (talk) 18:41, 9 June 2026 (UTC)

Note that works with seas of red pages often tend to not get further editing: even besides the visual effect, it tends to make it feel like validation vs. proofing (which tends to attract different editors). That said, having decent OCR is certainly a plus for works having misaligned or missing OCR. Note that English hyphenation automation is tricky, English tends to be very inconsistent over time "to-day" vs. "today", "co-operation" vs. "cooperation", "base-ball" vs. "baseball", etc. as well as the general problem with it being dependent, e.g. "My favorite coffee shop" vs. "My favorite coffee-shop-jazz album". MarkLSteadman (talk) 19:15, 8 June 2026 (UTC)

Thank you. Sadly Danish Wikisource have a lot of "dead" works and as I understand your comment creating the pages (and "read seas") may not really help getting them back on track.

What I like about the "Community collaboration" is that there seems to be a limited number of works and someone keeping track of the works. So works are not dropped even if they are not finished in the month they were planned to be worked on. --MGA73 (talk) 20:21, 8 June 2026 (UTC)

Different communities might have different success, and things like running OCR with the correct language might give much better results. The collaborations do seem to have had success in attracting some newer editors: they spotlight works, handle all the setup as well as transclusion when done, and allow trying it out in a visible way. We also with struggle with works sitting around without making any progress for 15 years etc. too, spotlighting in the Monthly Challenge has helped in some situations. 07:13, 9 June 2026 (UTC) MarkLSteadman (talk) 07:13, 9 June 2026 (UTC)

In terms of making the quotation marks consistent, we tend to wait until a collaboration work is fully proofread and then run a bot over all the pages in one go for consistency. That way we're not treading on each other and allowing new editors the chance to make a real contribution to the work. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 07:45, 9 June 2026 (UTC)

Do we have a bot that works for curly-ifying the quotation marks, or does this only work for straightening them? —Beleg Tâl (talk) 13:24, 9 June 2026 (UTC)

Sam did a script for this (Check WS:SCRIPTS#CurlyQuotes) for page-by-page work. So, a bot would be able to do that also. If you do use the script, I recommend running the PageCleanUp script first as it changes all the quotes to straight when there's a mixture. Then the CurlyQuotes script runs more efficiently. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 07:05, 10 June 2026 (UTC)

Index:My System.pdf

Hi, There are some TA constantly changing the header, i.e. . Yann (talk) 08:20, 8 June 2026 (UTC)

@Yann: the header changes with each new chapter. • M-le-mot-dit (talk) 08:40, 8 June 2026 (UTC)

Ah OK. I didn't know it is possible to change the header according to which chapter is currently proofread. Yann (talk) 08:42, 8 June 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-24

MediaWiki message delivery 21:30, 8 June 2026 (UTC)

A Description of Ukraine

Hello! Would anyone like to help me validate this book of great historical importance?

• Index:A Description of Ukraine Churchill (London 1704).pdf

I've already completed it in Dutch and French recently, and have begun on the 1780 German edition as well:

• fr:Description d’Ukranie (1660)
• nl:Beschrijving van Oekraïne//Borysthenes (Dniepr) (1664)
• de:Index:Beauplan 1780 Einzelseiten.pdf (1780)

The English edition of 1704 has only 40 pages, and I've already corrected them all. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 15:46, 9 June 2026 (UTC)

I don't follow how you are dealing with the sidenotes. For example on Page:A Description of Ukraine Churchill (London 1704).pdf/31 only the first is left as a sidenote and the rest have been moved as sub-headings in the body. -- Beardo (talk) 02:18, 21 June 2026 (UTC)

@Beardo Good point, I am working on that. See Index talk:A Description of Ukraine Churchill (London 1704).pdf#Chapters. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 07:27, 21 June 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-25

MediaWiki message delivery 16:48, 15 June 2026 (UTC)

Replacing the News link at the top of the Main Page

Since Wikisource:News is inactive, can we replace the link to it that is currently at the top of the Main Page? My suggestion would be to replace it with a link to the Beginner's guide. Nosferattus (talk) 03:07, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

Yes, certainly better than a dead page. Yann (talk) 05:37, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

For help Help:Contents would probably be more helpful than a link to only the beginner's guide (and includes that), but given Wikisource:Community portal (linked above news) already includes that, I'd argue we should maybe just put another link, such as here (WS:S) (maybe would help some people to get involved?). — Alien  3
3 3 20:56, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

Unknown authors

Hi, There are a few authors I could not find in Annals of Mathematics:

• Howe, H. A.: Annals of Mathematics/Volume 1/Index, Annals of Mathematics/Volume 2/Index, and Annals of Mathematics/Volume 3/Index
• Sawin, A. M.: Annals of Mathematics/Volume 1/Index
• Smith, E. B.: Annals of Mathematics/Volume 1/Index
• Flint, A. S.: Annals of Mathematics/Volume 3/Index
• McElroy, Geo. W.: Annals of Mathematics/Volume 3/Index

In addition, there is a confusion about Author:Ralph Henry Graves which should probably be renamed to Author:Ralph Henry Graves III, and a professor of mathematics, probably his father mentioned here (see and ). Thanks, Yann (talk) 07:06, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

I poked around and was able to find the identities of H. A. Howe (Herbert Alonzo Howe), A. S. Flint (Albert Stowell Flint), and A. M. Sawin (Albert Monroe Sawin).

Also, shouldn't Author:Ralph Henry Graves be turned into a disambiguation page (a la Author:Oliver Wendell Holmes), with the authors being disambiguated with their lifespan (like Author:Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894)) Nighfidelity (talk) 13:31, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

Yes, it should. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 16:05, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

OK, this is done. Yann (talk) 19:01, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

E. B. Smith = Edward Buckey Smith, math professor, Richmond, Virginia. Geo. W. McElroy = George Wightman McElroy, described in the paper as Assistant Engineer, U.S. Navy (but he eventually became a Rear-Admiral). Pasicles (talk) 15:53, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

Something like {{missing image}} but smaller?

There are a couple of missing icons on this page but the standard {{missing image}} template is just TOO huge to substitute them. Is there anything smaller? To the tune of {{missing icon}}? -- Wesha (talk) 18:55, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

This doesn't directly answer your question, but I did resolve the issue on the page using CropTool to pretty painlessly extract the two tiny images. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 09:53, 17 June 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for that, but the question still stands in case I run into this problem in the future. -- Wesha (talk) 16:35, 22 June 2026 (UTC)

Recent non-english works

In the last week or two, there have been a great number of index creations for files in Hindu/Tamil/other Indic languages (which were speedied as out of scope). Does anyone know why? I suppose there's a well-intentioned but ill-informed editing campaign somewhere, as happens every now and then. — Alien  3
3 3 20:49, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

Did you ask any of the users who made those indices? Are they IPs or users with accounts? ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:10, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

Accounts. For those I've spotted, I did post to their talk page, but got no responses. At least one of them was communicating only in Tamil, and might not know English. --EncycloPetey (talk) 21:30, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

Cleanup OCR script

Where can we put suggestions for additions to the cleanup ocr-script? --Dick Bos (talk) 08:34, 21 June 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-26

MediaWiki message delivery 13:05, 23 June 2026 (UTC)

RFC about AI-generated content in Wikimedia Commons

You are invited to participate in a request for comment on Wikimedia Commons about a policy update for AI content. This may affect files that are uploaded to Wikimedia Commons for use on this project. Thank you. Codename Noreste (talk) 17:12, 23 June 2026 (UTC)

Deployment of Legal and Safety Contacts Link in the Footer of Your Wiki

Legal & Safety Contacts

Hello community, the Wikimedia Foundation has provided a single legal and safety contact page, to be linked in the footer of your wiki, to ensure access to accurate legal information. This is a regulatory requirement. We have already rolled out links to English, German, Italian, Spanish and other wikis and we will deploy to your wiki soon. Please read more on the project page and leave any comments in this thread or on the talk page.

-- User:Sannita (WMF) (talk) 13:30, 25 June 2026 (UTC)

Treaty of the Bogue Deletion

Why is the entry for the Treaty of the Bogue deleted? I understand that perhaps it is because no source image of the treaty is found, but that is the problem. It is here, on Page 25:

Title: SUPPLEMENTARY TREATY BETWEEN HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN OF GREAT BRITAIN AND THE EMPEROR OF CHINA.

So how do you exactly fill the entry in? Blahhmosh (talk) 21:16, 25 June 2026 (UTC)

The text that was located at Treaty of the Bogue was deleted because it was a mix of a bunch of different documents that didn't belong together. It wasn't the same as the link you provided. If you want to add that book that you linked to, which has the treaty on Page 25, then you can do so using the procedure documented at Help:Beginner's guide to Index: files. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 23:43, 25 June 2026 (UTC)