Talk:Project Gutenberg

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 24 August 2020 and 4 December 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Paxrei.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 07:17, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Neutrality of Copyright Paragraph
Currently, the copyright paragraph contains the sentence:


 * As of 28 February 2018, Project Gutenberg is no longer accessible within Germany to comply with a court order from S. Fischer Verlag regarding the works of Heinrich Mann, Thomas Mann and Alfred Döblin.

This sentence is actually only a reflection of the published opinion of Project Gutenberg and is not an accurate reflection of the situation. The court order required them to remove 18 works. Blocking the entire country of Germany was entirely a decision on their part. They also make the rationale that removing all German users removes them from the jurisdiction of German courts. This is accurate. However, it is neither a typical nor an obvious reaction to this type of court ruling. "To comply with a court order" makes it sound as if they were ordered to do so, whereas it was a deliberate decision on their part, with the stated intent of affecting a change of laws in Germany (as stated in their QA page).

The German Wikipedia page does have a more balanced section on this ban, which could be translated or partially translated to remedy this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.243.87.183 (talk) 11:00, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

Neutrality Issue
A paragraph under the "criticism" section seemed to lack a neutral point of view and since it was also lacked any citation. I thought it was highly likely that it was original research so I decided to remove it from the article. If someone wants to go through it to fix the neutrality and cite the claims, it is below for easy access:


 * How Project Gutenberg recognizes volunteers' efforts in making classic literary works available to the public has also engendered criticism. Those who do the time-consuming work of producing and donating the initial etext files are typically credited within the introduction. But they may feel that others who later process their donated files are being unrealistically credited as "co-producers." Transforming the utilitarian plain text files that have been the Project Gutenberg staple into an HTML format, for instance, typically requires only a very small fraction of the effort needed to produce the original text file.

(Lexandalf (talk) 23:31, 25 May 2011 (UTC))

please provide lyrics of the poem
TO, Whomsoever is concern,

I am student of M.A. (Final) and i realy wanted the complete poem of lyrical ballad so that i can read it by heart and get good marks.kindly provide complete details as well as complete poem..

Regards, Pooja Bedi —Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.199.118.149 (talk) 08:33, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Which font?
File:Project Gutenberg logo.png Does anyone know which font the Project Gutenberg logo was set in?

John of Cromer in China (talk) mytime= Fri 09:17, wikitime= 01:17, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

List of Affiliated Projects
In the list of affiliated projects, are PG-EU and Project Gutenberg Europe the same web-site? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.193.107.182 (talk) 23:20, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Fixed establishing date
The infobox was displaying "12 January 1971 (First document posted)" for the Established info but this is wrong since the project's 1st published document lists its release date as (Dec 1, 1971) under Bibrec tab of the mentioned link. I fixed the Infobox's establishing date according to the bibliographic record info.

I doubted the wrong date because the project's idea came to belated Mr. Hart on the 4th of July 1971. So, I checked the article's history from newer to older till found this edit (diff) from 2013 that caused the problem. The correct date was displayed before this problematic edit. Thanks! SamzY (talk) 00:34, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

Dubious
The criticism section says:
 * "The text files use the legacy format of plain ASCII, wrapped at 65–70 characters, with paragraphs separated by a double-line break. In recent decades the resulting relatively bland appearance and the lack of a markup possibility have often been perceived as a drawback of this format"

The source is from 2000 and a dead link nor on Wayback so it's probably impossible to verify. But more so this seems like a dubious criticism as plain text is the perfect format for converting to whatever other format you want. The way it's worded "In recent decades.." sounds like someone's misguided opinion who thinks plain ascii is from some distant past decades ago. The Project isn't even that old. If the project was started today, they would probably still use plain text. And the idea that plain text "lacks markup possibility" is laughable as it can be simply imported into any markup language. -- Green  C  19:07, 10 March 2015 (UTC)


 * I agree. PG does publish in multiple formats if you go look at any book. .txt, .epub, .pdf, ... Updating this section does seem reasonable and necessary. Acebarry (talk) 03:36, 2 July 2015 (UTC)


 * This is a frequent criticism of Project Gutenberg. It is a pain in the ass; even simple markup, like bold and italics aren't handled in standard way, and anything more complex is very hard. And it's impossible to actually reformat text for printing or screen scaling, once you've got block quotes and poetry. It's certainly more complex in the current day, where HTML is used for a lot of works and there are formats autogenerated.--Prosfilaes (talk) 05:56, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

Thoughts on Using Website Infobox Instead of Library?
This project falls in the gray area of library and website. However, I feel that using the website infobox might better suit Project Gutenberg. Any thoughts would be appreciated! Acebarry (talk) 03:28, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

time line
Is there any way a timeline chart or graph could be added showing how many people were accessing the archive each year from inception? Was it only available through university sites up to a certain year? For organizations its helpful if you can see how widely known and accessible they were at various dates?

72.95.153.31 (talk) 12:03, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

words like "sham" and "mangled" in a questionable section?
‎In the List of affiliated projects, Project Gutenberg Self-Publishing Press section, words such as "sham" and "mangled" are used when accusing a company of basically pirating from wikipedia and gutenberg. The company's actions sound offensive, but the accusation and wording seem inappropriate for a wikipedia article. The citation links are only taking me to a page bereft of info? This section was added on 27 February 2016. Is this original research? Is my browser not taking me to the right pages? I don't want to just delete someone's work, but I don't have the connections to find good sources. Poidkurdo (talk) 14:30, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Still Blocked in Germany as of June 2020
The article currently states that

Although not accessible for years within Germany to comply with a court order from S. Fischer Verlag regarding the works of Heinrich Mann, Thomas Mann and Alfred Döblin, Project Gutenberg is once more accessible.

This is wrong. The site remains blocked as of June 2020. Here is a screen shot of the block message. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.243.87.183 (talk) 12:11, 11 June 2020 (UTC) - Hi, this has been done. MediumFPS (talk) 16:26, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

Earlier CD-ROMs
The section on CDs and DVDs begins in 2003, but Walnut Creek CDROM was publishing CD-ROMs of the Gutenberg collection for several years before that. In 1999 or 2000, I subscribed to the collection and got an updated CD with the entire Project Gutenberg etext collecion periodically until 2001. --Jim Henry (talk) 23:47, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Oldest Digital Library
In the first paragraph we are told that PG "is the oldest digital library." Although that is apparently an undisputed fact, the presentation rings somewhat incomplete. I would expect something like "the world's oldest digital library." Or: "the oldest digital library in existence." Toddcs (talk) 23:13, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

Outdated Logo?
The big red background & G used on this page currently might be outdated. I am looking at the Project Gutenberg website, and I am not seeing that used anywhere, and entirely different favicons and logos are used. It was uploaded in 2013; has the PG logo changed over the past 9 years? --Gwern (contribs) 14:32 22 February 2022 (GMT)
 * Yeah, they did a website overhaul in August 2020. The only place I've seen them still using the old logo is on their Twitter feed of new book releases. The article should use the PG logo up top and move the G logo down to the article body for posterity. lethargilistic (talk) 01:37, 2 March 2022 (UTC)