Wikisource

Wikisource is a sister project to Wikipedia that aims to create a free wiki compendium of primary source texts in any language, as well as translations of source texts. Originally called Project Sourceberg (after Project Gutenberg) during the planning stages for the project, the site was officially named Wikisource on December 6 2003 following a vote.

The logo shown, based on a picture of an iceberg, was used for Project Sourceberg, but has not attracted much enthusiasm since the change of name.

History

The project was launched on November 24 2003 under the temporary URL http://sources.wikipedia.org and later got its own domain name: http://wikisource.org.

Prior to this, source texts were placed at ps.wikipedia.org, which was mistakenly used to mean Project Sourceberg, but is actually the Pashto language Wikipedia. All texts which had been placed there were moved 30 april 2005, there were 2667 registered users (including 18 administrators) and almost 19,000 articles. The project passed its 96,000th edit on the same day.

The logo for Sourceberg is astonishingly similar to Sigmund Freud's use of an iceberg as an analogy to illustrate his concept of the human mind. In this model, approximately ten percent of the visible cap of the iceberg was used to represent the conscious mind. The greater bulk of the iceberg, the unseen ninety percent, was used to represent the unconscious mind. A good illustration of this analogy can be found on the following website: http://www.wilderdom.com/personality/L8–3TopographyMindIceberg.html

External links

• Wikisource site (English Main Page)
• Early discussions about the project