Talk:United States Constitution/Original texts on Wikipedia

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[edit] Original texts on Wikipedia

I note that Constitution of Canada has gone on the chopping block due to it being just a source text ported over to Wikipedia. I agree with this verdict, I've campaigned vociferously against source texts myself in other places. However, as a good red-blooded Canadian, I feel it is my duty to put United States Constitution up for the same treatment. Fair's fair, after all. :) Since this page gets linked to more frequently, though, I don't want to just go in and clear out great swaths without warning or consultation. Anyone have any comments or suggestions before I convert the US constitution to external links? Bryan Derksen, Friday, June 14, 2002

Go for it. Vicki Rosenzweig, Saturday, June 22, 2002
I strongly disagree. If it's put into the Wiki in such a way that context can be added, then it's a good thing to have the source text as well (note, for example, the Twelfth Amendment article). I also think the Canadian Constitution should be in Wikipedia as well. Any decent encyclopedia includes the full text of at least the U.S Constitution. RobLa, Saturday, June 22, 2002
The problem--other than the imbalance of chopping the Canadian constitution but keeping the US--is that *everything* here can be edited. That makes the Wikipedia a poor location for any source text--someone looking up the text of the US constitution needs to know that they're going to see the precise document, not something someone fiddled with because the commas in the Second Amendment don't work by 21st century standards, or something with a line missing because someone got careless. Or, worse, someone decided they disagreed with the people who wrote the thing, and took it on themselves to leave here what they think our constitution should be. Vicki Rosenzweig, Saturday, June 22, 2002
I also concur -- source texts like these are useless unless the reader can be reasonably sure that what is on the screen is actually what the original authors wrote. Small selections that are commented on are fine entire documents are most certainly not appropriate -- this is especially important with legal documents. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that tollerates some almanac-type list information, it is not a library. Rob, please see Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not number 12 and also some comments at talk:Macbeth. --maveric149

Cunctator has developed some ideas on separate project to handle the wikification of source texts, and I added a few thoughts. If anyone's interested, check out m:Project Sourceberg (his name, not mine ;-) over at the meta. --Stephen Gilbert

No need for to go through the trouble of having a separate project. What is needed is separate namespace that has special default properties -- such as only being able to be edited by "trusted hand" or greater users and be able to be called upon by other articles with the following or similar syntax: [[source:Origin of Species/Chapter 1{1-15}] (where "1-15" are line numbers) and also serve as stand-alone wikified texts. Of course, there would have to be strongly enforced policies to only correct OCR errors and to wikify the text. See my idea at wikipedia:feature requests. --maveric149

Personaly, I (and others, based on comments on the Sourceberg page) don't think that primary sources are well suited for permanent wiki life. Once they are corrected and linked to articles, there's not need to keep them in an editable state. Also, I think it's important to for the Wikipedia project to remain focused on producing encyclopedia articles. Inputing, correcting, and linking source texts, while very interesting and useful, doesn't fall under that mandate. I think, if enough people are interested, that the wikification of sources is best left to a closely related but separate sister project. --Stephen Gilbert

I've redirected all the original-text pages here, except for United States Constitution/Article One, which is protected. Can any sysop help me with redirect that to this page? jheijmans, Friday, July 19, 2002

Cunctator, please look at Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not # 12:

"Mere collections of public domain or other source material; such as entire books, original historical documents, letters, laws, proclamations (...)"

Please restore the previous status. Jeronimo 11:19 Aug 10, 2002 (PDT)


jheijmans, the amendments are of enough historical signicance to have their own pages. Whether or not the source text is quoted on them is less of a concern (they are short enough that it doesn't do harm), but they all have histories associated with them. As you can see from this long talk thread, I was pretty upset to see the amendments get redirected, and was quite relieved to see Cunctator's action. -- RobLa
Maybe the US constitution is interesting enough for an encyclopedia article, but who guarantees the page is not edited here at Wikipedia? Just because the constitution is not copyrighted, there's no need to paste it in. Instead, it would be far more interesting to read about the meaning of the constitution to the country, the people, the world; its history and evolution.

I will restore the redirect version when I have the time for it. Jeronimo 11:19 Aug 10, 2002 (PDT)

You aren't getting it, are you? There is no justification for having an article about the 12th amendment redirect back to a general page about the constitution. None. This isn't about having source text or not, it's about whether or not the amendments deserve separate articles. -- RobLa
How about if I remove the text from each amendment page, leaving a link to http://www.archives.gov/exhibit_hall/charters_of_freedom/constitution/constitution_transcription.html and a stub describing the basic gist of the amendment's content? I don't know a lot about the history of the various amendments, and their detailed implementation throughout history, so that would be left to future editors to flesh out. Bryan Derksen 16:36 Aug 10, 2002 (PDT)
That sounds good to me Bryan. The amendments shouldn't be in an editable state and we accomplish nothing by being yet another mirror for them. We are making an encyclopedia here. --mav
That's better. As I said before, my biggest beef was with nuking the separate articles. That said, I think it's humorous that people think hyperlinks to external sites are more reliable than source text. Other websites change their URL structure all of the time. Heck, the recent change from nara.gov to archives.gov broke all of the constitution links. I think it's blind orthodoxy to have a black and white policy prohibiting source text. -- RobLa
Hey, I want the text there. It's not like it's a burden, and it's very useful. And I dare you to find a paper encyclopedia that doesn't include any excerpts from major documents. --The Cunctator

Excerpts are fine. At issue here is if the entire text should be in here --- which is a public editable website. The text is worthless without some reasonable assurance that it is exactly the same as the original. Therefore the stubs and external links. --mav

This sort of thing has been discussed lots of times in the past, see WikiBiblion and associated talk for example. Obviously, I agree with Maveric here. Bryan Derksen
Obviously I agree with RobLa here. There's plenty of a reasonable assurance that the text is exactly the same as the original. Find the differences. It's not like someone can sneak in changes. --The Cunctator
Looks like the Cunctator is willing to fight this edit war longer than I intend to stay up tonight. But unless someone comes up with some good reason for this particular source text to be left in Wikipedia while all the others are being removed, I'll resume work on it again later. Bryan Derksen
Same here. Let him have it for another day. Perhaps the extra time will give him some time to cool off. I have more interesting things to do right now than fight an edit war. --mav
So do I.==The Cunctator

I dont know why you just don't leave it the way it is. its fine why change soemthing that is fine. its a waste of time. just leave it the way it is. In my persanol opinion wikipedia should be more tnhan an encyclpedia it should contain more facts and bits and bobs than any other encyclopedia, factfinder ever contained. I also thing there should be a dictionary section. Maybe links like this for defenitions: WikiDictionary\abnormal.

But no one ever likes my opinons or idea so its prob a wate of my time wrting this . - fonzy.

Cunctator and RobLa: an encyclopedia is to look up information ABOUT various subjects. If I look up the Bible, I don't expect to find a verbatim copy of the text there. I want to know what signficance the book has, who wrote it, why it is so important. Such a discussion may use some quotes from the book itself, though they would need to be explained. If I would simply get the full text instead, I'd probably go away to some other encyclopedia instead. The same for the (US) constitution. If I wanted to read the full text, I'd probably search for it specifically and not bother to look it up in an encyclopedia anyway. In stead, I expect to find something about the history, the significance etc. of the US constitution. And yes, even the individual articles or amendments may be of interest (f.e. the gun-bearing amendment). And in some cases, if the text is short, that could even include a full copy of the text while remaining interesting, such as the Article 9 of the Constitution of Japan article. So, if you have something to write about the constitution, please do, but do a little more than just the plain text. Jeronimo 12:29 Aug 11, 2002 (PDT)