Talk:Editathon

Welcome everyone! Talk pages can be used to discuss individual articles; you can also use to to announce a change you are about to make (but want others to comment on) or to document a change you have already made (but want others to know about, and discuss if they like). For the editathon, we can ues this discussion page to document and discuss it. Simply click "+ New topic" to begin a discussion, or "reply" to comment on existing entries. Please sign you contribution either by typing "--~~~~" or using the signature icon next to B and I icons. The "--~~~~" will automatically converted to your user name and a date, just click "Save page" and you will see. --Christof Rolker (talk) 09:52, 5 April 2023 (CEST)

These tasks originally were drafted for an editathon in 2023, and some tasks in this contexts were assigned to individual participants who had volonteered for them. There are many which are still open for anyone interested, and even those that have been done can serve as a model of how to improve other articles.Just have a look and start improving any article you like. Christof Rolker (talk) 18:51, 26 May 2024 (CEST)

PS As of 2024, you do not have to sign your contributions on a discussion page. Christof Rolker (talk) 18:52, 26 May 2024 (CEST)

Task for Greta: CDP

Greta volunteered for the Collectio duodecim partium. Note that Linda's article on the two versions has been split into two separate entries: Collectio XII partium (first version) and Collectio XII partium (second version). Both should become stand-alone articles, although of course it will make sense to refer back to the first version for many details. Remember, internal links are easy: choose "Edit source", ignore the ugly look the page now has, and insert the page name in square brackets, save your changes - are you are done! So a link to the article on CDP2 looks like this: [[Collectio XII partium (first version)]] and a link to Burchard like this [[Burchard of Worms, Liber decretorum]], but once you click "Save changes", they magically become Collectio XII partium (first version) and Burchard of Worms, Liber decretorum. --Christof Rolker (talk) 09:54, 5 April 2023 (CEST)

Tasks for Joaquín: Collections

Joaquín volunteered for Collectio X partium, Collectio novem librorum (Ghent and Wolfenbüttel), and Collectio Catalaunensis II. Maybe he wants to refer to a certain monograph Linda could not yet use in 2005... As it is already in the Bibliography, just use the short title. If you insert this: {{Author|Sedano}}, Colección when using "edit source", it will look like this once you save your changes: "Sedano, Colección". --Christof Rolker (talk) 10:03, 5 April 2023 (CEST)

Done! JSedano (talk) 12:56, 5 April 2023 (CEST)

Task for Kate: Barberiniana

The Collectio Barberiniana article could need an update. To begin with, adding internal links to all the other collections mentioned in the article would already be very useful - and perhaps also add links to the Barberiniana in the articles thus linked to. For instructions, see above (inserting links) or here Welcome_new_user#Improve_the_description_of_your_favourite_collection_(or_any_other) --Christof Rolker (talk) 10:08, 5 April 2023 (CEST)

Clean-Up Task for Clemens

Clemens, do you have an idea how to add all articles on manuscripts into the Category:Manuscript (which does not yet exist)? We talked about how useful this would be, as we would no longer to manually keep a list of mss and keep track of pages having been moved etc. Maybe the special page "Replace text" can help? Or the fact that currently all mss pages are linked to from our List of manuscripts? --Christof Rolker (talk) 10:19, 5 April 2023 (CEST)

Done. All manuscript pages now have the Category:Manuscript setting. See Category:Manuscript Clemens Radl (talk) 19:27, 14 April 2023 (CEST)

Excellent! Thanks a lot, Christof Rolker (talk) 19:45, 14 April 2023 (CEST)

Is there a check routine for SORTKEY issues? IIRC, you had something like this for the collections. Nothing urgent, it's just one of the benefits of the new category is that one can easily spot mss pages where SORTKEY is lacking, so I wondered whether these pages need manual fixing. Christof Rolker (talk) 19:49, 14 April 2023 (CEST)

Actually, no. The only routine there is, is the nightly program that checks every ms. description if it has a SORTKEY (and tries to invent a plausible SORTKEY, if it doesn't). Can you point me to some mss. that have problems with sorting? Then I could investigate and decide if my algorithms needs to improve or if we need to do it by hand. Clemens Radl (talk) 20:30, 14 April 2023 (CEST)

General Clean-Up Task for Anyone: Formatting

In the long run, it would nice if the article layout was uniform. Following Wikipedia standards, I think it would be good to always have at the very beginnin a short para with general information, followed by the main text (with more or less headings, depending on the length of the article); all articles should end with a "Literature" section and "Categories". Have a look at the Collectio Anselmo dedicata article which is (in my view) too long but formatted along these lines.

Have a look at any collection from our list; improve the layout. --Christof Rolker (talk) 11:39, 5 April 2023 (CEST)

Should we only format the articles or can we propose changes (reduce, e.g) as well? JSedano (talk) 12:59, 5 April 2023 (CEST)

Of course you can improve any article in any way! The "tasks" here are only meant as suggestions - people suggested that Danica and I provide a little more guidance, so I came up with these, but all of you are most welcome to improve any article! Christof Rolker (talk) 19:50, 5 April 2023 (CEST)

Tiny Clean-Up task for anyone: Add "Is a Collection" to articles on collections

A tiny, and boring, but ultimately useful task is to add all descriptions of individual collections into the Category:Collection; this allows us to compiled a sort of index to the Wiki, but hopefully also will help other automated statistics and search functions in the future. If you want to take on this task, please do the following:

1. Reply to this entry to volunteer.
2. Go to Category:Descriptions lacking categories, where you will find 20+ articles.
3. Click on the first of them; click "Edit source" and go the very bottom. Add [[Category:Collection]]; click "Save changes", and you are done.
4. Repeat.

You can also randomly check other entries (see Description of the collections for a list) as not all entries lacking this kind pf category are in the Category:Descriptions lacking categories. Do not remove [[Category:Descriptions lacking categories]] unless you are sure that the article in question has been put in all reelvant categories, including key, date of origin, place of origin, size, and information on the databse entries (have a look here: Collectio Anselmo dedicata). --Christof Rolker (talk) 10:41, 5 April 2023 (CEST)

Small Clean-Up task for anyone: Identify which century a collection was compiled

A small, but slightly less boring task is to add all descriptions of individual collections into a category like Category:Collection saec IX; this allows us to navigate the wiki more easily and, in the future, to improve search functions (like a filter in the Clavis database: search for this canon, but only in collections compiled in the ninth century). If you want to take on this task, please do the following:

1. Reply to this entry to volunteer.
2. Go to Category:Descriptions lacking categories, where you will find 20+ articles.
3. Click on the first of them; check whether it already is in a category like Category:Collection saec IX; if not, read the article to learn when the collection in question was compiled.
4. Click "Edit source" and go the very bottom. Add [[Category:Collection saec V]], [[Category:Collection saec VI]], [[Category:Collection saec VII]], or whatever is appropriate; click "Save changes", and you are done.
5. Repeat.

You can also randomly check other entries (see Description of the collections for a list) as not all entries lacking this kind pf category are in the Category:Descriptions lacking categories. Do not remove [[Category:Descriptions lacking categories]] unless you are sure that the article in question has been put in all reelvant categories, including key, date of origin, place of origin, size, and information on the databse entries (have a look here: Collectio Anselmo dedicata). --Christof Rolker (talk) 10:40, 5 April 2023 (CEST)

Slightly bigger Clean-Up task for anyone: Identify where a collection was compiled

A similar useful task is to add all descriptions of individual collections into a category like Category:Collection saec IX; this allows us to navigate the wiki more easily and, in the future, to improve search functions (like a filter in the Clavis database: search for this canon, but only in collections compiled in the ninth century). If you want to take on this task, please do the following:

1. Reply to this entry to volunteer.
2. Have a look at Categories for collections by region to see how the categories work.
3. Go to Category:Descriptions lacking categories, where you will find 20+ articles.
4. Click on the first of them; check whether it already is in a category like Category:Collection from Northern France; if not, read the article to learn where the collection in question was compiled.
5. Click "Edit source" and go the very bottom. Add [[Category:Collection from Northern France]], [[Category:Collection from Southern Italy]], or whatever is appropriate; click "Save changes", and you are done.
6. Repeat.

You can also randomly check other entries (see Description of the collections for a list) as not all entries lacking this kind of category are in the Category:Descriptions lacking categories. Do not remove [[Category:Descriptions lacking categories]] unless you are sure that the article in question has been put in all reelvant categories, including key, date of origin, place of origin, size, and information on the databse entries (have a look here: Collectio Anselmo dedicata). --Christof Rolker (talk) 10:57, 5 April 2023 (CEST)

Clean-Up Tasks for Anyone: Improve Manuscript Articles

Improving mss descriptions is easy and useful.

1. Have a look at our List of manuscripts and the Category:Article with known issues; look at some existing articles (blue links) and see whether there is a bunch of them (e.g. Mss from one archive) you want to improve
2. Reply to this entry to indicate you volunteer for these mss
3. Improve the description (date? place? content?), add links to digital images, add links to the description of the collections contained.
4. If you also feel like adding categories, do so; if not, don't worry.
5. Repeat

I suggest you do say which subset of mss you want to improve (mss of collection X, in archive Z, ...) to avoid overlap, but I may be overcautious here. --Christof Rolker (talk) 11:06, 5 April 2023 (CEST)

Moderately Advanced Clean-Up Task for Anyone: Add Categories to Manuscript Articles

As with the description of collections, articles on manuscript profit from being placed into categories. They help to navigate the wiki ("are there more mss of Burchard? If so, are they digitized?"), to generate statistics ("How many 12th c mss of German collections are there?"), and may in the long run make possible new search features.

If you feel comfortable with the categories, you can more or less pick any manuscript from our List of manuscripts and start improving. Have a look at Categories and Welcome new user, and/or take existing articles as your guide, e.g. Vat. lat. 3833 or Turin E.V.44. You can also have a look which articles other users are currently improving without adding categories, and do some follow-up improvement on these articles. The "Recent changes" function in the Navigation bar (in the menu on the right on most machines, but that depends) can give you a clue which MSS pages have recently been updated.

Reply to this topic if you want others to know what you are working on, or just go for it (it is unlikely that two people end up working on the same MSS at the same time). --Christof Rolker (talk) 11:17, 5 April 2023 (CEST)

Advanced Clean-Up Task for Anyone: Help Others

Have a look at Category:Article with known issues; see if you can help. Reply to this topic to ask for help yourself. --Christof Rolker (talk) 11:29, 5 April 2023 (CEST)

Basic Clean-Up Task: Make a Wish

• Are there MSS you find important? Check out if they are on our List of manuscripts; if not, do let me know (by repling to this topic). If the article already exists, but is missing a description, categories, links to digital images, or any other feature you want to have, choose "Edit source", go to the bottom of the page, enter [[Category:Article with known issues]], and click "Save changes". The page in question will be visible for anyone doing clean-up tasks in the future.
• Same for collections: If you find a description of a collection unsatisfactory, but you cannot fix the issue yourself at the moment, click "Edit source", go to the bottom of the page, enter [[Category:Article with known issues]], and click "Save changes". Maybe you can leave a comment somewhere what the problem is.

• Alternatively, reply to this topic indicating which pages need to be improved - no need to play around with categories if you don't want.

--Christof Rolker (talk) 19:59, 5 April 2023 (CEST)

Basic Clean-Up Task: Identify copies of a given collection

We have a long List of manuscripts. At the moment, they are not really linked to the descriptions of the respective collections. If you, perhaps using Lotte's ever-helpful book, want to identify copies of individual collection you really would improve the Wiki.

How do you do that?

1. Go to List of manuscripts.
2. Scroll until you find the signature of a copy; click on the link, whether it's red or blue doesn't matter. (I suggest to always have the list open in one tab, and open the mss pages in new tabs).
3. Click "edit". Using copy&paste, insert something along the lines "This is a copy of ... from the ...th century." If you use the same form of title found here, this would be even better.
4. Repeat.

If you like, reply to this entry to announce the changes you are about to make.

See below for a slightly advanced version. --Christof Rolker (talk) 17:33, 6 April 2023 (CEST)

Moderately Advanced Clean-Up Task for Anyone: Identify copies of a given collection (with categories)

We have a long List of manuscripts. At the moment, they are not really linked to the descriptions of the respective collections. If you, perhaps using Lotte's ever-helpful book, want to identify copies of individual collection you really would improve the Wiki.

How do you do that?

1. Go to List of manuscripts.
2. Scroll until you find the signature of a copy; click on the link, whether it's red or blue doesn't matter. (I suggest to always have the list open in one tab, and open the mss pages in new tabs)
3. Click "edit source". Using copy&paste, insert something along the lines "This is a copy of ... from the ...th century." If you use the same form of title found here, this would be even better.
4. Also, using copy&paste, insert some categories. See below for an example. If you only use the first line that's fine too. Everything helps.
5. Repeat.

Here's a bit of code you can adapt:
== Categories ==
* a copy of Gratian [[Category:Manuscript of GR]]
* From Admont (which counts as "Southern Germany") [[Category:Manuscript from Southern Germany]]
* saec XII [[Category:Manuscript saec XII]]
* digitized [[Category:Digitized Manuscript]]

See the Categories page for the apropriate categories.

If you like, reply to this entry to announce the changes you are about to make. --Christof Rolker (talk) 17:46, 6 April 2023 (CEST)

Minor Clean-Up task: Signatures

References to manuscripts should be uniform. If you want to help with this, please do so. You can look up random articles or use the search bar on top to search for known/suspected/common error.

Manuscripts should be cited in the form "Place name, Library/Archive, Shelf Mark". The List of manuscripts can serve as a model (note the use of local languages, not English, for place names).

In the articles, shorter forms are common and indeed nicer. Place names may be omitted and library names abbreviated. Standard abbreviations include:

• BAV for Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana
• BM for all Bibliothèque municipales, including all those now called Médiatheques now or whatever
• BnF (not BN) for Bibliothèque nationale de France
• BSB for Bayerische Staatsbibliothek
• HAB for Herzog August Bibliothek
• SBPK for Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preussischer Kulturbesitz
• UB for Universitätsbibliothek, whatever fancy names they may have. Some are Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, which is fine, but some just have unnecessarily long names.

--Christof Rolker (talk) 20:33, 7 April 2023 (CEST)

Advanced Clean-Up Task for Anyone: Split articles

Linda sometimes treated two or more collections together, for good reasons. For the online version, however, there are even better reasons to have one (and only one) article for every collection in the database; only if every collection has its own article, we can use categories to describe collections. Several articles therefore have been split (look at the various Dionysiana articles, for example). You can help improving the Wiki by splitting the remaining articles.

1. Find an article that needs splitting in the Category:Descriptions that need to be split
2. Read the currect article and think how the description can be split into two or more articles; every articles should make sense if read on its own, but cross-referencing is easy. If you think you can do it, reply to this post to indicate what article you are about to split.
3. Create the new articles needed. This is very easy; in the Description of the collections, every link (in blue) to a description that needs splitting is followed by links (in red) to the articles it should be split into. Just click on such a red link, start writing (or copy&pasting), and do not forget to save your changes - done.
4. Do not worry about the old article; it can stay as it is, and we will delete it later if and only if the new articles are apt to replace the old one. Do not worry about categories for the new articles either; someone will add them at some point.

Thanks in advance, --Christof Rolker (talk) 10:55, 14 April 2023 (CEST)

The Collectio Dionysiana II in particular is a tricky case (one collection? two? @Abigail?), see discussion page to this article. Christof Rolker (talk) 20:40, 14 April 2023 (CEST)

Simple Task: Identify a Collection in Kéry but not in this Wiki

Kéry's invaluable volume on the pre-Gratian collections is more complete than the 2005 Clavis canonum handbook, so there are many collections found there still missing here. If you want to improve the Wiki, there are two options: You can create the page yourself:

1. Make sure the page does ont exist yet using the search bar at the very top.
2. Your search will redirect you to a new page which contains an option to create a new page ("Create the page "X" on this wiki!" in bold, with your search term "X" in red).
3. Clicking on the red link will create the new page; simply start typing, do not forget to save your changes, and you are done. Do not worry if your initial description is brief or incomplete; others will improve it.
4. If you like, report your contribution here by replying to this post.

If you are not familiar with creating a page, or simply in a hurry, you can still help us to expand the Wiki from Kéry simply by replying to this post indicating the name of a collection you are missing, plus perhaps the page in Kéry's book or other details. --Christof Rolker (talk) 06:38, 16 April 2023 (CEST)

Clean-Up Task: check bibliographical details

The 2005 version of the Clavis handbook cites literature in a heavily abbreviated style, and we follow this model in the Wiki too. All books and articles quoted in more than just one article should be listed in the Bibliography. All entries in this bibliography come with a suggested short title, normally the first noun of the title. You can simply copy&paste the suggested quotation (highlighted in gray); do not worry about the ugly code. "{{Author|Agustín}}, Dialogi" will become "Agustín, Dialogi" once you insert it anywhere in this wiki.

If you spot literature cited in a long form which is, or should be, in the Bibliography, you can improve the Clavis Wiki by replacing it with the short form as found in the Bibliography. If needed, update the Bibliography first (including a suggested short title for the new entry) and rework individual articles accordingly.

Don't be shy abbreviating titles - it is relatively easy to automatically replace abbreviated reference with full bibliographical details as long as you stick to the short titles suggested in the Bibliography.

Also, the Bibliography may be improved by correcting bibliographical details and adding links to digital copies.

Thanks --Christof Rolker (talk) 09:43, 17 April 2023 (CEST)

Simple but very helpful: add short articles on mss

In many articles, and also in this List of manuscripts, there are red links indicating manuscripts we would love to have an article on but don't. Have a look, perhaps there are mss you are interested in. Also have a look at standard reference works (Bischoff's Katalog, Kéry's Collections, Maassen's Geschichte, or Mordek's Bibliotheca); if you have no copy at hand, check out the Bibliography for digitized works.

• Look up the mss in question in one or more of these works.
• Click on the relevant red link
• Write a few lines on the ms: where was it written, when, what does it contain, and is there a digital copy and/or a deailed description somewhere? If you like, esp if there is some controvery, add name, short title and page number to cite your sources.
• Don't forget to save your work.
• Done! You have added a new article which others can read, link to, improve, etc.

Christof Rolker (talk) 19:02, 26 May 2024 (CEST)