Wikipedia talk:Don't include copies of primary sources

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[edit] Older discussion

Supporters of this rule include:

  • Daniel C. Boyer: The least one can say is that a primary source is not the same thing as an article on the primary source, which is what you'd expect when you look it up. If primary sources are going to be included (which I'm not arguing for) they should be titled to differentiate them from their respective articles, which have to take priority.
  • clasqm (If working with primary sources is your thing, go to Project Gutenberg instead),
  • Damian Yerrick (if you just want to mirror a Gutenberg etext with links, go to Everything2 instead.),
  • JHK (Sources aren't encyclopedic--descriptions and discussions of sources are),
  • Eclecticology (except for very rare important texts that can't be found anywhere else)
  • maveric149 (small annotated sections are fine, dumps of entire books, laws or other documents without any or very little annotation is useless because any yahoo can change what the author or the text said -- which is the only real value of the text itself)
  • DanKeshet
  • Kosebamse - small portions and exceptional texts, yes, but generally, no source texts please.
  • Daniel Quinlan - Sources aren't encyclopedic. Why on earth is a wiki needed or even wanted for copies of primary sources? A separate site is needed with a different mission focus. Excerpts are sometimes appropriate for articles about source text, though. For example, Beowulf and History of the English Language both contain short excerpts from Beowulf.
  • Maximus Rex - An encyclopedia isn't a place to dump source text.
  • Angela - source texts are not encyclopedic and not suitable for a wiki.
  • Fuzheado - the value of an encyclopedia is its role as a secondary reference, not as a depository for source text. (See below for more)
  • Minesweeper - I agree with the sentiments above. Static text is best left outside of a dynamic encyclopedia.
  • DJ Clayworth However short quotes are fine, and there may be exceptions.
  • SimonP , within reason, of course
  • Martin - but short quotes are fine - anything less than 10% of the article would be OK, in general.
  • RickK - If you really want to reference source text, use an external link.
  • Viajero - Let's not duplicate what is already available elsewhere on the Net.
  • Danny - quoting brief passages to highlight a point is fine or illustrate a historical episode is fine, but complete primary texts should not be dumped here.
  • Bryan - An encyclopedia article about some piece of literature should be about that piece of literature, not a full copy of it.
  • Hephaestos - I didn't know this was even an issue. Short paragraphs are fine of course, but let's not bog down the 'pedia, I think that's what Wikisource was created for.
  • Gentgeen
  • [[User:Neutrality|Neutrality (hopefully!)]] 02:06, Nov 24, 2004 (UTC)
  • Audiovideo - For example, it is too easy for someone to copy a whole article from the Catholic Encyclopedia, label half the article as an objective history (OK-ish subject to NPOVing and other editing) and the other half as an orthodox Catholic opinion. There is no justification for the second half, since a link will do, and it usually long and based on a strong POV based on commentary of the beginning of the 20th century.
    Catholic Encyclopedia isn't a primary source... Adam Bishop 02:09, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    It is being used as one in the second half of Gallicanism --Audiovideo 02:19, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • instead of writing the entire text of a treaty in the article of a treaty - we should summarize the treaty and then provide an external link to the actual treaty. it should be standard practice to avoid lengthy quotations, and instead to summarize them. Kingturtle 17:37, 7 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Jusjih - I support this guideline to avoid excessive duplicates, but as an administrator at Wikisource (but not here), I would like to remind at this guideline that even though fair use is possible here, it is extremely limited at Wikisource.--Jusjih 04:05, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Opponents include:

  • Geronimo Jones (strongly!),
  • tbc (strongly!),
  • The Cunctator (though I think a better long-term solution is needed),
  • Damian Yerrick (literary analysis benefits from having a copy of the primary source close by),
  • 24 - sometimes the best thing to do is cite and let the reader decide. For instance Gulliver's Travels is an old book, it's hard to read to find the fun passages, so I plucked them to illustrate the point. If I plucked too much, someone else removes the excess.
  • JamesDay Print Wikipedia must include at least a significant amount of modestly sized source material, so that material is necessary in the online Wikipedia as well.
  • Andre Engels: Giving a source text is one of the best ways to give information about it. But one should not include whole books on Wikipedia.
  • Adam Bishop - I'm not sure which side to vote on, because my opinion has been expressed on both sides :) I think quoting excerpts is fine, but dumping a whole text doesn't seem very productive or useful.
  • Adambiswanger1 - Short poems, even some as long as Kubla Khan, do absolutely nothing to harm the article, and without it the encyclopedia is incomplete. Wikipedia should not have valuable source information excluded because of the need for other editors to have things organized and departmentalized to an absurd degree. If it helps improve the article, keep it.

Counter-argument: Wikipedia is a repository of all general knowledge, and primary sources certainly fall within that mission. However, the current Wikipedia code needs some way to automatically distinguish between entries and primary sources, or a way to automatically work with Project Gutenberg.

I adamantly oppose the idea of excluding primary sources. I know that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and that traditionally encyclopedias don't include primary sources but why? I say it was because of the constraints inherent with paper, and remember m:Wiki is not paper! There is no limit to how big or complete Wiki can be, we don't have to squeeze the sum of human knowledge into 20 expensive bound volumes and excluding primary sources is applying paper era thinking to computer age technology. Its obvious we need some way to lock pages so they cannot be edited anymore(except by Adminstrators) otherwise we would have tricksters going into the Wikified complete King James Bible and changing the Ten Commandments(from 'Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery' to 'Thou shalt get thy freak on.' for example). I think the Administrators already have this ability, all we need to do is have a way for them to know which pages need to be locked or unlocked. Setting up something like Larry Sanger/Please lock these pages and Larry Sanger/Please unlock these pages should do the trick. -- User:MemoryHole.com

The problem with using source text, is that there is no guarantee that the text won't be edited. RickK 08:42, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Neither is there any kind of guarantee for other texts. If you worry about someone changing Shakespeare's writings, why don't you worry about someone changing his birth date? Andre Engels 11:37, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I'm opposed to the willy-nilly inclusion of primary sources into Wikipedia, because I think it could potentially place a *very* heavy load on the server (we could end up with terabytes of primary source material, particularly if we start getting images, sound and video), making it considerably more difficult to mirror, and so on. A parallel project for a "primary source repository" would be cool, though, but I doubt any server on earth could afford to keep it running (is a RedHat CD ISO a "primary source"? Probably. Can Bomis afford to mirror it? Probably not) --User:Robert Merkel

Some (a little) primary source material is indispensable. But Wikipedia is not the place for swathes of it. When I look in an encyclopaedia for a reference to William Shakespeare, my expectations of an encyclopaedia is that there will be a biographical outline, his historical context, a list of references, some criticism, and perhaps a few examples of his work and a couple of salient plot synopses. I would be somewhat amazed to find not only all of the foregoing but the complete works not only of WS, but also Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, John Ford, The Battle of Maldon (poem), Beowulf, the Bible, etc, etc, etc. It would be a very large collection of tomes liable to collapse under the weight of their own critical mass, an almost Borgesian proposition to even contemplate... User:sjc

My opinion is that Wikipedia can and should include primary sources, but we shouldn't do it indiscriminately. Wikipedia is an ideal tool to facilitate convenient publication of primary sources together with textual analisys and even perhaps scholarly apparatus.

Consider the text of a few Shakespeare dramas that we currently have. They are just Gutenberg copies (or other copies available freely on the web), with some nicer formatting. What's the use of keeping them on Wikipedia if they're available in hundreds of other places?

But if we were to publish in Wikipedia an authoritative, scholarly edition of a Shakespeare play, together with textual apparatus, notes on which readings are preferred for which reasons, etc. etc. - that would, in my opinion, be valuable, and serve well the Wikipedia ideal of moving in deeper and broader than a traditional encyclopaedia. Or, alternatively, the text of the plays precisely as in the Folio edition, or the Quarto edition, could be published, and that would be very valuable for everyone who wanted to see Shakespeare's text as it first appeared - something not so easily and not so widely available on the web precisely because it's a scholarly resource, not a general-purpose resource - but one of Wikipedia's purposes may be to provide such scholarly resources.

It's the same with other primary sources. Don't just take a KJV Bible off the web - take it, and proofread it, and make a web of topics around it discussing its history, its translation principles, etc. etc.

Finally, the software should be accomodated to allow for easier work with primary sources, as well. Those who actually imported Shakespeare etc. into Wikipedia will probably know better than I what to suggest in this regard.

--User:AV

Darn right (I imported and formated Macbeth. Ouch.). I completely agree with Anatoly. Primary sources can be of great use in Wikipedia, but only if we're going to be dedicated about editing scholarly resources, and only if the software is improved to handle such large texts. Until then, I'm going to stay away from importing more large sources. --Stephen Gilbert

I will gladly change my vote from agree to disagree if and when the wikiware is changed to allow for strong protection of primary sources. One way this can be done is through the use of a source:namespace that only can be edited by sysops or trusted longtime users and be called upon by individual lines in an article. For example, typing [source:Origin of Species/Chapter 1{1-15}] within the edit box of an article causes the display lines 1 through 15 of Chapter 1 of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species in that article (working in a similar way as placing a url of an uploaded image in the same edit box -- except the result will be selectable text). This way, one could call upon any set of lines within the Origin of Species and annotate until they are blue in the face without changing what Darwin said. However this really is on the border of being a counter-wiki idea and may go beyond the scope of this project.... What does everyone else think? --maveric149

I think that dumps of too much primary source material distract us from what we're here for. That would be fine as a separate Wikimedia project, but I don't want to come to Wikipedia to read "Origin of Species". Now, the occasional interesting scan of an interesting document or a short poem that somebody wrote, that's great. DanKeshet

For that matter, if you do do a paragraph-by-paragraph analysis, I don't think that belongs here either. DanKeshet

I like mav's idea of a "Source:" namespace, though I would consider it almost another project, like Gutenberg. Source text is not a good match for the working method of a Wiki -- an enormous volume of static information doesn't work well with the dynamic, human-eyeball oriented nature of Wiki. Wikipedia is level 2-4 of the information pyramid, not 1-2. -- Fuzheado

I also like the idea of a separate space for sources. On a general note, we always say that 'disk is cheap, but in fact Wikipedia was suffering from sever performance problems recently; would this have been better if the content was smaller? We might be able to reinstate searching.

In practice I see no benefit to having sources for commonly available text on Wiki - Shakepeare, Bible, US Constituion etc. I can see a better argument if there is no stable place on the web where you can find the source. If there is then we should just link to it. DJ Clayworth 15:00, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Wikipedia is CPU-bound, not disk-bound, so disk is cheap applies, so long as we do something about original sources before we have the whole of every religious work here. Lets just try to remember that we're after an encyclopedia and limit what we have to what makes sense in the context of the articles - which is unlikely to include 50 pages of source text. "What makes sense in the print Wikipedia?" is a good question to ask. That will need primary sources in moderate amounts, but complete books would be silly. JamesDay 15:09, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Nobody is claiming CPU or disk limitations as a reason to not include source material. That's a straw man. The reason is because we need to have mission focus, because Wikipedia (in all respects: stability, user community, policies, software, and more) is not designed for management, editing, and maintenance of source materials, and because source materials should be in a completely different namespace and on a different site. I think a Wiki project or even a Wikipedia-affiliated project or source materials is a great idea — we could certainly use it as a stable reference for many articles. However, such a project would be quite different and it makes more sense to put it on a different host. And of course, there are some projects that are doing this very thing. Finally, I don't think anyone in the "don't" category is actually expressing a desire to stamp out excerpts, that's another another straw man. Daniel Quinlan 08:24, Nov 15, 2003 (UTC)

I assume that DJ wasn't following the mailing list and didn't know that disk wasn't the problem. This proposed policy has been used to oppose including even such limited text as one famous part of the bible. Perhaps you'd care to rename this to something like "don't include large amounts of primary source text" or ""don't include more primary source text than needed, rarely as much as a few pages"? Those would probably be supported by almost eveyone with objections or reservations to the current version, me included. JamesDay 09:07, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Even though Wikipedia may not be immediately constrained by space considerations, I believe that the project should not duplicate endeavors that are being done elsewhere. Wikipedia should keep its focus and concentrate on being an encyclopedia offering high-quality "encylopedic articles", acknowledging that the concept of an encyclopedia will inevitably evolve in cyberspace. -- Viajero 10:38, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

90% of what is in Wikipedia is already done elsewhere on the web (and the remaining 10% is not our best part). The question is not whether we should be an encyclopedia or not. The question is whether (and if so, when) including primary sources makes Wikipedia a better encyclopedia. Andre Engels 12:16, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

We should not become a repository for source material, but a blanket 'no' on source material is even worse. I would not want to have the complete works of Shakespeare or the whole Bible on Wikipedia, but I think the Universal Declaration of Human Rights would be good to have on Wikipedia, and pages like Ten Commandments and Jabberwocky would be a lot worse without source text. No whole books though, if a text gets too long to fit on a normal Wikipedia page, it is probably better to give a summary of its contents, whether or not with selected quotes. (Hmmm... Seems I'm close to Kosebamse, although he says s/he's in favour, and I say I'm against). Andre Engels 11:35, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

But, but, but, nobody has proposed a blanket 'no' on source material, so I don't know why everyone keeps mentioning that. Just no copies of source material. If source material is needed inline to explain something or show an example and only takes up, say, 10% of the article, then I think everything agrees that it does not violate the rule. This, of course, does not mean we want to become a site for literary analysis (the rule about copies of primary sources is exclusionary, not inclusionary). Daniel Quinlan 12:33, Nov 15, 2003 (UTC)
Maybe we should include more text in the article and/or change the title (eg to wikipedia:primary sources) to reflect that? Currently I think people are missing the subtlety - might help if we made it explicit? Martin 14:22, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Daniel, I agree with what you wrote in that last paragraph (except if something is shared by several articles and moved to be most of one to avoid duplication, or similar sorts of things), and clearly, so do most who've commented here, so why not have this rule say what we mean? That way people won't be tempted to cite it for a few sentences. JamesDay 15:21, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Huh? What is the difference between source material and copies of source material? The page is quite clear "No copies of source material". Many people, including you, have said "yes" to that. I say "no" to it, and these are my reasons. - Andre Engels 11:10, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)
"source material" includes both excerpts and complete copies (what I meant by "copies", a copy is an exact duplicate, meaning not an excerpt, I thought that was obvious from my contrasting "copies" with "excerpts"). And I think excerpts are okay. Complete copies are best kept elsewhere (as I said). Daniel Quinlan 12:01, Nov 16, 2003 (UTC)
Well, then I disagree. I think complete copies can be very useful, provided the work quoted is not too large. Andre Engels 22:48, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)
But, but, but, nobody has proposed a blanket 'yes' on source material, so I don't know why everyone keeps mentioning that. Andre Engels 11:16, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)
To the contrary, a few people oppose the deletion of source material all the time on VfD. That sounds like a blanket 'yes' to me. Daniel Quinlan 12:01, Nov 16, 2003 (UTC)
Quite a few more people are in favor of the deletion of source material, giving 'source material' as their only reason. Andre Engels 22:48, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

(moved from Wikipedia_talk:What Wikipedia is not )


I just added a new entry on Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not. The entry is concerned with the habit of some, to do wholesale copy-and-paste jobs of public domain source material (i.e. entire books, laws, etc.). One of the worst (or best?) examples is the The Origin of Species article that has each entire chapter in its own subpage! This would be a real nice, cool and useful thing, if the entire planet couldn't edit the text and therefore change what Darwin said. This type of use (misuse?) of public domain text is, for practical reasons, useless. It would be nice if there was a way to submit such text into a central repository, under our control, so that articles that need to can link to the text and the text will be at a stable IP, and be formatted and presented in a consistant way. However, this should not be a wiki (although there should be a way to edit the text for typos -- but that would require a formal review). This is probably something that would be better done on Nupedia. maveric149

I'd agree in general (though it's not a universal view around here), but I would argue that there are some exceptions where the entire text of a primary source does belong here, where the material is a) short, and b) important. For instance, I would argue that the entirety of the US Declaration Of Independence is acceptable, as might be the text of Jabberwocky, or an image of the Mona Lisa. I would agree that there does need to be some way to lock such primary texts. Otherwise, while somebody should be storing important primary sources (and whilst cooperation with such projects is an excellent idea) I don't see that Wikipedia is the place for it.

My main exception to the copy/paste practice is the fact that primary sources of historical documents and other works should not be editable by the general public if those documents are being presented as the original text. I agree that short and highly relevant documents should be in an encyclopedia -- It is just not possible to protect what the original authors said if the text is editable in the wiki way. It would be great, if we had a place to "upload" such text, link to it in an article, and have it displayed in a non-editable, text-box (all it would be in edit mode is the URL to the text file -- just as it now is with images). maveric149

We already have such a place to upload such text.

As long as we maintain a link to some "primary source", it might be OK to keep fully-editable copies here. It's pretty easy for someone to repair vandalism by simply re-copying and re-pasting from that other web site.

DavidCary 21:42, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

[edit] National anthems

Wikipedia policy pages are only useful if they outline the policies that Wikipedia actually uses. Every page I have seen on a national anthem contains the full lyrics. Also see Wikipedia:Lyrics and poetry, which specifically states "you should include lyrics and poetry whose copyright has expired" and that the lyrics of "national anthems are generally considered to be a special case of fair use." - SimonP 21:03, August 22, 2005 (UTC)

  • Wikipedia:Lyrics and poetry is apparently only supported by you and two others on the inclusion of lyrics and poetry, per its talk page, and is certainly not definitive. On the other hand, to quote Bryan Derksen above: "An encyclopedia article about some piece of literature should be about that piece of literature, not a full copy of it." Note that the wording that you added in July 2005 has been used in defence of maintaining the status quo on national anthem articles that contain only 1 sentence of actual encyclopaedia article text aside from the raw dump of the lyrics, and of a project that would have encyclopaedia articles contain all translations of the primary source text into other languages, too. In practice, several song and poem articles have only escaped deletion by having the dumps of their lyrics moved to Wikisource. The idea that articles about songs, any songs, should include their lyrics can be seen to chill the actual writing of encyclopaedia articles. That's not desirable, given the goal of writing an encyclopaedia. Uncle G 22:22:24, 2005-08-22 (UTC)
    • Most of our national anthem articles were, at some point, the lyrics and only one or two sentences of encyclopedic text (e.g. [1], [2], [3]). Over time they grew, as I'm sure will any other article that today has only a small amount of exposition. - SimonP 21:22, August 24, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed merge

I've added the mergeto tag to the article as I saw a mergefrom tag on the other page. Personally, I am in favor of merging the articles with the other article converted into a redirect. If that fails, we should atleast have a See also section in each article linking to the other article. --Gurubrahma 12:20, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

I disagree wholeheartedly, as there are plenty of primary source documents that are not lyrics or poetry. Furthermore, there are rules and principles that do not apply to this subject that apply to lyrics and poetry.- CobaltBlueTony 22:11, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] One line summary

There being a need for concise one line summaries of guidelines, I offer this version. Please feel free to change it as necessary, and update the template Template:Guideline one liner to suit your taste. If the summary is inaccurate, please improve it rather than removing the template. Comments and opinions welcome! Stevage 13:14, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

I made a slight tweak changing entire to lengthy. With very short works, such as Ozymandias or O Canada, having the full text is not unusual. - SimonP 13:48, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
Thanks! Stevage 14:16, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Suras of the Qur'an

There are a number of WP articles on Suras of the Qur'an that contain the entire text of one of the translations (not sure which translation) (e.g. At-Tawba), though not all of them do (e.g. An-Nur). Per the Bible discussion, these would seem better hosted on wikisource, where they may be already (haven't looked). Schizombie 07:30, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Copyrighted primary sources with non-commercial licenses are to be disallowed at Wikisource

As an administrator at English Wikisource, I would like to remind that the Wikimedia Foundation has considered that copyrighted primary sources with non-commercial licenses are to be disallowed at Wikisourcedue to being GFDL-incompactible. Please see my latest edit at the project page for further information.--Jusjih 04:35, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] No Limits Music Ministries

No limits Music Ministries is an accappella music group formed in South Africa in 2004. Their genre is influenced by Seventh Day Adventist Heritage singers, Take 6 and other popular musicians even though their style is more into African Accappella.

This group was formed around March in 1995 in Orlando West. “Back then we were just a collective of students living in Africa’s largest township Soweto Thembela Mvelase, Mpumelelo Mvelase, Nomvula Mashobeng, Sibongile Mambo, Simphiwe Kamanga, Buelah Motea, Wandile Nkosi, Ronnie and Makhekhe and Kgomotso Moshugi and Zanele Dlamimi.”


They have performed over the years, nationally and abroad and independently recorded no less that 5 albums by 2006. “we give Africa a lift to the world of vocal afro-jazz-gospel music and we love sharing this with the rest of the world”. Their music was and still is inspired by our Christian beliefs and you will find that coming up a lot in our lyrical content. The music itself fuses elements of classical to jazz music and anything in between yet remains decidedly South African in its nature. “ Our recordings are made of original compositions and arrangements; we believe this adds to the level of uniqueness you will enjoy as you listen” say the group Most of the songs are written and/or arranged by group member Kgomotso Moshugi. Some songs are accompanied, but all have the fresh, rhythmic, harmonic sound we love from groups like Ladysmith Black Mambazo. This talented group has had a lot of members over the years and still changing. Please feel free to update the facts.

[edit] Short quotes

(Please let me know if this isn't the right place to ask, and where I should ask instead.) I see in this guideline that "Smaller sources and samples are acceptable in articles". Is there any guidance on having, say, dozens of small sources and samples in an article? I'm referring specifically to the Pat Buchanan article, in case that helps folks answer my question. Schi 23:16, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] On the Banks of the Old Raritan

There is a copy of the lyrics of the song included in this article, which I removed and added to wikisource (PD, as it was written in 1873), but my removal of the lyrics was removed with references to a number of articles such as national anthems and other fight songs that include lyrics. Is there any consensus on lyrics of PD songs? Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 19:54, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Will make minor edit: first sentence of article has minor flaws

I see all the comments this page seem philosphical etc., but I just came here for info, that I'll have to find elsewhere, and found a first sentence that immediately threw me. In it is a parenthetic adverbial phrase containing a short list of examples. I find it thus:(specifically text; maps, artworks and other images can be very useful). First, the semi-colon would be after the adverb "specifically" except that it should instead be a colon since a parenthetic phrase is otherwise out of context with the sentence structure; not parenthesised, it could stand if the article (the) were added before "text", but as it is, a colon must stand in as a declarative "that is". Second is the last phrase, which, not being in context with the whole sentence, is practically nonsense (obviously a mistake, I believe this qualifies as patent nonsense). Without being too judgemental, I figure that someone might have forgotten to edit parts that were pasted together or something, so, in order to minor edit this without knowing the actual meaning, I will go with my best guess given the sentence it is in. I will leave the word "useful" in the phrase, moved to its only sensible place. I believe the following constitutes a minor edit:(specifically: text, maps, artwork and other useful images). I'm sorry to be picky; I mean only to help. I read two nights ago that Ted Kosinski would return letters written to him by his brother with all of the grammar and punctuation corrected. I guess I'm not so bad, huh? Bearpa 04:32, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

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